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properly certificated man on board.
As to the second mate, all I can say his name was Tottersen, or something like that. His
practice was to wear on his head, in that tropical climate, a mangy fur cap. He was,
without excep- tion, the stupidest man I had ever seen on board ship. And he looked it too.
He looked so con- foundedly stupid that it was a matter of surprise for me when he
answered to his name.
I drew no great comfort from their company, to say the least of it; while the prospect of
making a long sea passage with those two fellows was depress- ing. And my other
thoughts in solitude could not be of a gay complexion. The crew was sickly, the cargo
was coming very slow; I foresaw I would have lots of trouble with the charterers, and
doubted whether they would advance me enough money for the ship's expenses. Their
attitude towards me was unfriendly. Altogether I was not getting on. I would discover at
odd times (generally about mid- night) that I was totally inexperienced, greatly ig- norant
of business, and hopelessly unfit for any sort of command; and when the steward had to
be taken to the hospital ill with choleraic symptoms I felt bereaved of the only decent
person at the after end of the ship. He was fully expected to recover, but in the meantime
had to be replaced by some sort of servant. And on the recommendation of a cer- tain
Schomberg, the proprietor of the smaller of the two hotels in the place, I engaged a
Chinaman. Schomberg, a brawny, hairy Alsatian, and an awful gossip, assured me that it
was all right. "First- class boy that. Came in the suite of his Excellency Tseng the
Commissioner--you know. His Excel- lency Tseng lodged with me here for three weeks."
He mouthed the Chinese Excellency at me with great unction, though the specimen of the
"suite" did not seem very promising. At the time, however, I did not know what an
untrustworthy humbug Schomberg was. The "boy" might have been forty or a hundred
and forty for all you could tell-- one of those Chinamen of the death's-head type of face
and completely inscrutable. Before the end of the third day he had revealed himself as a
confirmed opium-smoker, a gambler, a most audacious thief, and a first-class sprinter.
When he departed at the top of his speed with thirty-two golden sovereigns of my own
hard-earned savings it was the last straw. I had reserved that money in case my
difficulties came to the worst. Now it was gone I felt as poor and naked as a fakir. I clung
to my ship, for all the bother she caused me, but what I could not bear were the long
lonely evenings in her cuddy, where the atmosphere, made smelly by a leaky lamp, was
agitated by the snoring of the mate. That fellow shut himself up in his stuffy cabin
punctually at eight, and made gross and revolting noises like a water-logged trump. It was
odious not to be able to worry oneself in comfort on board one's own ship. Everything in
this world, I reflected, even the command of a nice little barque, may be made a delusion
and a snare for the unwary spirit of pride in man.
From such reflections I was glad to make any es- cape on board that Bremen Diana.
There appar- ently no whisper of the world's iniquities had ever penetrated. And yet she
lived upon the wide sea: and the sea tragic and comic, the sea with its horrors and its
peculiar scandals, the sea peopled by men and ruled by iron necessity is indubitably a part
of the world. But that patriarchal old tub, like some saintly retreat, echoed nothing of it.

She was world proof. Her venerable innocence apparently had put a restraint on the
roaring lusts of the sea. And yet I have known the sea too long to believe in its respect for
decency. An elemental force is ruthlessly frank. It may, of course, have been Hermann's
skilful seamanship, but to me it looked as if the al- lied oceans had refrained from
smashing these high bulwarks, unshipping the lumpy rudder, frighten- ing the children,
and generally opening this fam- ily's eyes out of sheer reticence. It looked like reti- cence.
The ruthless disclosure was in the end left for a man to make; a man strong and elemental
enough and driven to unveil some secrets of the sea by the power of a simple and
elemental desire.
This, however, occurred much later, and mean- time I took sanctuary in that serene old
ship early every evening. The only person on board that seemed to be in