Falk | Page 4

dom, lying up a river as might be London lies up this old
Thames of ours. No more need be said of the place; for this sort of thing might have hap-
pened anywhere where there are ships, skippers, tugboats, and orphan nieces of
indescribable splen- dour. And the absurdity of the episode concerns only me, my enemy
Falk, and my friend Hermann.
There seemed to be something like peculiar em- phasis on the words "My friend
Hermann," which caused one of us (for we had just been speaking of heroism at sea) to
say idly and nonchalantly:
"And was this Hermann a hero?"
Not at all, said our grizzled friend. No hero at all. He was a Schiff-fuhrer: Ship-conductor.
That's how they call a Master Mariner in Germany. I prefer our way. The alliteration is
good, and there is something in the nomenclature that gives to us as a body the sense of
corporate existence: Apprentice, Mate, Master, in the ancient and hon- ourable craft of
the sea. As to my friend Hermann, he might have been a consummate master of the
honourable craft, but he was called officially Schiff- fuhrer, and had the simple, heavy
appearance of a well-to-do farmer, combined with the good-natured shrewdness of a
small shopkeeper. With his shaven chin, round limbs, and heavy eyelids he did not look
like a toiler, and even less like an adventurer of the sea. Still, he toiled upon the seas, in
his own way, much as a shopkeeper works behind his counter. And his ship was the

means by which he maintained his growing family.
She was a heavy, strong, blunt-bowed affair, awakening the ideas of primitive solidity,
like the wooden plough of our forefathers. And there were, about her, other suggestions
of a rustic and homely nature. The extraordinary timber projections which I have seen in
no other vessel made her square stern resemble the tail end of a miller's waggon. But the
four stern ports of her cabin, glazed with six little greenish panes each, and framed in
wooden sashes painted brown, might have been the windows of a cottage in the country.
The tiny white cur- tains and the greenery of flower pots behind the glass completed the
resemblance. On one or two occasions when passing under stern I had de- tected from my
boat a round arm in the act of tilt- ing a watering pot, and the bowed sleek head of a
maiden whom I shall always call Hermann's niece, because as a matter of fact I've never
heard her name, for all my intimacy with the family.
This, however, sprang up later on. Meantime in common with the rest of the shipping in
that East- ern port, I was left in no doubt as to Hermann's no- tions of hygienic clothing.
Evidently he believed in wearing good stout flannel next his skin. On most days little
frocks and pinafores could be seen drying in the mizzen rigging of his ship, or a tiny row
of socks fluttering on the signal halyards; but once a fortnight the family washing was
exhibited in force. It covered the poop entirely. The after- noon breeze would incite to a
weird and flabby activ- ity all that crowded mass of clothing, with its vague suggestions
of drowned, mutilated and flattened hu- manity. Trunks without heads waved at you arms
without hands; legs without feet kicked fantasti- cally with collapsible flourishes; and
there were long white garments that, taking the wind fairly through their neck openings
edged with lace, be- came for a moment violently distended as by the passage of obese
and invisible bodies. On these days you could make out that ship at a great distance by
the multi-coloured grotesque riot going on abaft her mizzen mast.
She had her berth just ahead of me, and her name was Diana,--Diana not of Ephesus but
of Bremen. This was proclaimed in white letters a foot long spaced widely across the
stern (somewhat like the lettering of a shop-sign) under the cottage windows. This
ridiculously unsuitable name struck one as an impertinence towards the memory of the
most charming of goddesses; for, apart from the fact that the old craft was physically
incapable of engaging in any sort of chase, there was a gang of four children belonging to
her. They peeped over the rail at passing boats and occasionally dropped various objects
into them. Thus, sometime before I knew Hermann to speak to, I received on my hat a
horrid rag-doll belonging to Hermann's eldest daughter. However, these youngsters were
upon the whole well behaved. They had fair heads, round eyes, round little knobby noses,
and they resembled their father a good deal.
This Diana of Bremen was a most innocent old ship, and seemed to know nothing