"Come on now. Nobody's chasing you. Nobody's after you. Your reaction is quite unnecessary. Don't take what I say amiss."
"Nobody! I'll tell you what--let's go up there. We'll find people in that restaurant, conviviality, some beverage or other to cheer us up and definitely a paraffin lamp which will put your enemy, male or female, in the shade."
"Paraffin!" Löhnefinke muttered to himself, catching hold of and holding onto the word like a guilty man in the high court a cry of 'Amnesty'?
"Listen. There's still a brass band playing up there. How about we sit down for a while to imbibe a glass of grog and..."
"...wait for the moon to go down? Yes. That would be the right thing to do."
"But we'll have a long wait, I'm afraid. The moon doesn't set until past quarter to seven tomorrow morning, but, if it's any consolation, dark clouds are rising from the sea and we can wait until one of those clouds comes to cover the moon as it surely will."
"Yes. I take your point. I'll willingly, only too willingly, go along with your suggestion. Colleague, I'm entirely under your guardianship. We'll go to this watering hole, wait till a cloud masks that grinning monstrosity and drink the odd grog while we do so!" opined the worked-up Prussian civil servant. And so we ascended the steep steps, arrived, without having broken our necks, at the top of them and turned right through the dune grass towards the illuminated pavilion on the links, loud with blaring music and packed out with spa outpatients.
Just as we went through the door of the round building, however, the brass band suddenly stopped playing. The musicians put away their instruments or tucked them under their arms. They also downed a free schnapps at the buffet counter and left, and most of their audience, strangely enough, followed on their heels without first having digested the pleasure derived from their music. Only a few groups of more discerning people continued to linger over their glasses.
A rather lively wind sprang up over the North Sea. The waves crashed with greater noise and were covered with whiter and more foamy caps. The enlivening and warming drink that we had ordered before we sat down was about to have the most soothing of influences on both our state of mind and our bodily comfort.