are wrapped in
mystery. But we agreed that the times were changed. And we talked of old
ships, of sea-accidents, of break-downs, dismastings; and of a man who
brought his ship safe to Liverpool all the way from the River Platte
under a jury rudder. We talked of wrecks, of short rations and of
heroism--or at least of what the newspapers would have called heroism
at sea--a manifestation of virtues quite different from the heroism of
primitive times. And now and then falling silent all together we gazed
at the sights of the river.

A P. & O. boat passed bound down. "One gets jolly good dinners on board
these ships," remarked one of our band. A man with sharp eyes read
out the name on her bows: Arcadia. "What a beautiful model of a ship!"
murmured some of us. She was followed by a small cargo steamer, and the
flag they hauled down aboard while we were looking showed her to be a
Norwegian. She made an awful lot of smoke; and before it had quite blown
away, a high-sided, short, wooden barque, in ballast and towed by a
paddle-tug, appeared in front of the windows. All her hands were forward
busy setting up the headgear; and aft a woman in a red hood, quite alone
with the man at the wheel, paced the length of the poop back and forth,
with the grey wool of some knitting work in her hands.

"German I should think," muttered one. "The skipper has his wife on
board," remarked another; and the light of the crimson sunset all
ablaze behind the London smoke, throwing a glow of Bengal light upon the
barque's spars, faded away from the Hope Reach.

Then one of us, who had not spoken before, a man of over fifty, that had
commanded ships for a quarter of a century, looking after the barque now
gliding far away, all black on the lustre of the river, said:

This reminds me of an absurd episode in my life, now many years ago,
when I got first the command of an iron barque, loading then in a
certain Eastern seaport. It was also the capital of an Eastern kingdom,
lying up a river as might be London lies up this old Thames of ours.
No more need be said of the place; for this sort of thing might have
happened anywhere where there are ships, skippers, tugboats, and orphan
nieces of indescribable splendour. And the absurdity of the episode
concerns only me, my enemy Falk, and my friend Hermann.

There seemed to be something like peculiar emphasis on the words "My
friend Hermann," which caused one of us (for we had just been speaking
of herois