The Centaur | Page 9

Trebizond this time?" he added.
"No; Batoum."
"Ach! Oil?"
"Caucasus generally--up in the mountains a bit."
"God blenty veapons then, I hope. They shoot you for two pfennig up
there!" And he was off with his hearty deep laugh and rather ponderous
briskness toward the bridge.
Thus O'Malley found himself placed for meals at the right hand of Dr.
Stahl; opposite him, on the doctor's left, a talkative Moscow
fur-merchant who, having come to definite conclusions of his own
about things n general, was persuaded the rest of the world must share
them, and who delivered verbose commonplaces with a kind of
pontifical utterance sometimes amusing, but usually boring; on his right
a gentle-eyed, brown-bearded Armenian priest from the Venice
monastery that had sheltered Byron, a man who ate everything except
soup with his knife, yet with a daintiness that made one marvel, and
with hands so graceful they might almost have replaced the knife
without off offence. Beyond the priest sat the rotund Canadian
drummer. He kept silence, watched the dishes carefully lest anything
should escape him, and--ate. Lower down on the opposite side, one or
two nondescripts between, sat the big, blond, bearded stranger with his
son. Diagonally across from himself and the doctor, they were in full
view.
O'Malley talked to all and sundry whom his voice could reach, being
easily forthcoming to people whom he was not likely to see again. But

he was particularly pleased to find himself next to the ship's doctor, Dr.
Heinrich Stahl, for the man both attracted and antagonized him, and
they had crossed swords pleasantly on more voyages than one. There
was a fundamental contradiction in his character due--O'Malley
divined--to the fact that his experiences did not tally as he wished them
to do with his beliefs, or vice versa. Affecting to believe in nothing, he
occasionally dropped remarks that betrayed a belief in all kinds of
things, unorthodox things. Then, having led the Irishman into
confessions of his own fairy faith, he would abruptly rule the whole
subject out of order with some cynical phrase that closed discussion. In
this sarcastic attitude O'Malley detected a pose assumed for his own
protection. "No man of sense can possibly accept such a thing; it is
incredible and foolish." Yet, the biting way he said the words betrayed
him; the very thing his reason rejected, his soul believed....
These vivid impressions the Irishman had of people, one wonders how
accurate they were! In this case, perhaps, he was not far from the truth.
That a man with Dr. Stahl's knowledge and ability could be content to
hide his light under the bushel of a mere Schiffsarzt required
explanation. His own explanation was that he wanted leisure for
thinking and writing. Bald-headed, slovenly, prematurely old, his beard
stained with tobacco and snuff, under-sized, scientific in the
imaginative sense that made him speculative beyond mere formulae,
his was an individuality that inspired a respect one could never quite
account for. He had keen dark eyes that twinkled, sometimes
mockingly, sometimes, if the word may be allowed, bitterly, yet often
too with a good-humored amusement which sympathy with human
weaknesses could alone have caused. A warm heart he certainly had, as
more than one forlorn passenger could testify.
Conversation at their table was slow at first. It began at the lower end
where the French tourists chattered briskly over the soup, then crept
upwards like a slow fire o'erleaping various individuals who would not
catch. For instance, it passed the harvest-machine man; it passed the
nondescripts; it also passed the big light-haired stranger and his son.
At the table behind, there was a steady roar and buzz of voices; the

Captain was easy and genial, prophesying to the ladies on either side
Of him a calm voyage. In the shelter of his big voice even the shy
found it easy to make remarks to their neighbors. Listening to
fragments of the talk O'Malley found that his own eyes kept wandering
down the table--diagonally across--to the two strangers. Once or twice
he intercepted the doctor's glance traveling in the same direction, and
on these occasions it was on the tip of his tongue to make a remark
about them, or to ask a question. Yet the words did not come. Dr. Stahl,
he felt, knew a similar hesitation. Each, wanting to speak, yet kept
silence, waiting for the other to break the ice.
"This mistral is tiresome," observed the doctor, as the tide of talk
flowed up to his end and made a remark necessary. "It tries the nerves
of some." He glanced at O'Malley, but it was the fur-merchant who
replied, spreading a be-ringed hand over his plate to feel the warmth.
"I know it well," he said pompously in a tone of finality; "it lasts three,