“Oh, I quite forgot!” said Davies, who had been kneeling on one knee in the low doorway, absorbed in his visitor. “This is ‘_meiner Freund_,’ Herr Carruthers. Carruthers, this is my friend, Schiffer Bartels, of the galliot _Johannes_.”
Was I never to be at an end of the puzzles which Davies presented to me? All the impulsive heartiness died out of his voice and manner as he uttered the last few words, and there he was, nervously glancing from the visitor to me, like one who, against his will or from tactlessness, has introduced two persons who he knows will disagree.
There was a pause while he fumbled with the cups, poured some cold coffee out and pondered over it as though it were a chemical experiment. Then he muttered something about boiling some more water, and took refuge in the forecastle. I was ill at ease at this period with seafaring men, but this mild little person was easy ground for a beginner. Besides, when he took off his oilskin coat he reminded me less of a sailor than of a homely draper of some country town, with his clean turned-down collar and neatly fitting frieze jacket. We exchanged some polite platitudes about the fog and his voyage last night from Kappeln, which appeared to be a town some fifteen miles up the fiord.
Davies joined in from the forecastle with an excess of warmth which almost took the words out of my mouth. We exhausted the subject very soon, and then my _vis-à-vis_ smiled paternally at me, as he had done at Davies, and said, confidentially:
“It is good that the captain is no more alone. He is a fine young man—Heaven, what a fine young man! I love him as my son—but he is too brave, too reckless. It is good for him to have a friend.”
I nodded and laughed, though in reality I was very far from being amused.
“In an ugly place, and in ugly weather,” he answered, gravely, but with a twinkle of fun in his eye. “But has he not told you?” he added, with ponderous slyness. “I came just in time. No! what am I saying? He is brave as a lion and quick as a cat. I think he cannot drown; but still it was an ugly place and ugly——”
“What are you talking about, Bartels?” interrupted Davies, emerging noisily with a boiling kettle.
I answered the question. “I was just asking your friend how it was you made his acquaintance.”