once I felt the need for the greatest
possible diplomacy at this juncture. So I demurred just enough to draw
him on. Falk sat up, but except for a very noticeable enlargement of the
pupils, till the irises of his eyes were reduced to two narrow yellow
rings, his face, I should judge, was incapable of expressing excitement.
"Oh, yes! Hermann did have the greatest..."

"Take up your cards. Here's Schomberg peeping at us through the blind!"
I said.

We went through the motions of what might have been a game of e'carte'.
Presently the intolerable scandalmonger withdrew, probably to inform the
people in the billiard-room that we two were gambling on the verandah
like mad.

We were not gambling, but it was a game; a game in which I felt I held
the winning cards. The stake, roughly speaking, was the success of the
voyage--for me; and he, I apprehended, had nothing to lose. Our intimacy
matured rapidly, and before many words had been exchanged I perceived
that the excellent Hermann had been making use of me. That simple and
astute Teuton had been, it seems, holding me up to Falk in the light of
a rival. I was young enough to be shocked at so much duplicity. "Did he
tell you that in so many words?" I asked with indignation.

Hermann had not. He had given hints only; and of course it had not taken
very much to alarm Falk; but, instead of declaring himself, he had taken
steps to remove the family from under my influence. He was perfectly
straightforward about it--as straightforward as a tile falling on your
head. There was no duplicity in that man; and when I congratulated
him on the perfection of his arrangements--even to the bribing of the
wretched Johnson against me--he had a genuine movement of protest. Never
bribed. He knew the man wouldn't work as long as he had a few cents in
his pocket to get drunk on, and, naturally (he said-"_naturally_") he
let him have a dollar or two. He was himself a sailor, he said, and
anticipated the view another sailor, like myself, was bound to take.
On the other hand, he was sure that I should have to come to grief. He
hadn't been knocking about for the last seven years up and down that
river for nothing. It would have been no disgrace to me--but he asserted
confidently I would have had my ship very awkwardly ashore at a spot two
miles below the Great Pagoda....

And with all that he had no ill-will. That was evident. This was a
crisis in which his only object had been to gain time--I fanc