Falk | Page 6

strain of pagan piety. Excellent Mrs. Hermann's
baggy cotton gowns had some sort of rudimentary frills at neck and bottom, but this girl's

print frocks hadn't even a wrinkle; nothing but a few straight folds in the skirt falling to
her feet, and these, when she stood still, had a severe and statuesque quality. She was
inclined naturally to be still whether sit- ting or standing. However, I don't mean to say
she was statuesque. She was too generously alive; but she could have stood for an
allegoric statue of the Earth. I don't mean the worn-out earth of our possession, but a
young Earth, a virginal planet undisturbed by the vision of a future teeming with the
monstrous forms of life and death, clamorous with the cruel battles of hunger and
thought.
The worthy Hermann himself was not very en- tertaining, though his English was fairly
compre- hensible. Mrs. Hermann, who always let off one speech at least at me in an
hospitable, cordial tone (and in Platt-Deutsch I suppose) I could not un- derstand. As to
their niece, however satisfactory to look upon (and she inspired you somehow with a
hopeful view as to the prospects of mankind) she was a modest and silent presence,
mostly en- gaged in sewing, only now and then, as I observed, falling over that work into
a state of maidenly meditation. Her aunt sat opposite her, sewing also, with her feet
propped on a wooden footstool. On the other side of the deck Hermann and I would get a
couple of chairs out of the cabin and settle down to a smoking match, accompanied at
long in- tervals by the pacific exchange of a few words. I came nearly every evening.
Hermann I would find in his shirt sleeves. As soon as he returned from the shore on board
his ship he commenced operations by taking off his coat; then he put on his head an
embroidered round cap with a tassel, and changed his boots for a pair of cloth slippers.
Afterwards he smoked at the cabin-door, looking at his children with an air of civic virtue,
till they got caught one after another and put to bed in various staterooms. Lastly, we
would drink some beer in the cabin, which was furnished with a wooden table on cross
legs, and with black straight-backed chairs--more like a farm kitchen than a ship's cuddy.
The sea and all nauti- cal affairs seemed very far removed from the hos- pitality of this
exemplary family.
And I liked this because I had a rather worrying time on board my own ship. I had been
appointed ex-officio by the British Consul to take charge of her after a man who had died
suddenly, leaving for the guidance of his successor some suspiciously un- receipted bills,
a few dry-dock estimates hinting at bribery, and a quantity of vouchers for three years'
extravagant expenditure; all these mixed up to- gether in a dusty old violin-case lined
with ruby velvet. I found besides a large account-book, which, when opened, hopefully
turned out to my infinite consternation to be filled with verses--page after page of rhymed
doggerel of a jovial and im- proper character, written in the neatest minute hand I ever
did see. In the same fiddle-case a photograph of my predecessor, taken lately in Saigon,
repre- sented in front of a garden view, and in company of a female in strange draperies,
an elderly, squat, rugged man of stern aspect in a clumsy suit of black broadcloth, and
with the hair brushed forward above the temples in a manner reminding one of a boar's
tusks. Of a fiddle, however, the only trace on board was the case, its empty husk as it
were; but of the two last freights the ship had indubitably earned of late, there were not
even the husks left. It was impossible to say where all that money had gone to. It wasn't
on board. It had not been remitted home; for a letter from the owners, preserved in a desk
evidently by the merest accident, complained mildly enough that they had not been
favoured by a scratch of the pen for the last eighteen months. There were next to no
stores on board, not an inch of spare rope or a yard of canvas. The ship had been run bare,

and I foresaw no end of difficulties before I could get her ready for sea.
As I was young then--not thirty yet--I took myself and my troubles very seriously. The
old mate, who had acted as chief mourner at the cap- tain's funeral, was not particularly
pleased at my coming. But the fact is the fellow was not legally qualified for command,
and the Consul was bound, if at all possible, to put a