work,
but, if the truth were known, simply when his arbitrary spirit moved
him), after ascertaining carefully in the office that there was enough
money to meet his bill, would come along unsympathetically, glaring
at you with his yellow eyes from the bridge, and would drag you out
dishevelled as to rigging, lumbered as to the decks, with unfeeling
haste, as if to execution. And he would force you too to take the end of
his own wire hawser, for the use of which there was of course an extra
charge. To your shouted remonstrances against that extortion this
towering trunk with one hand on the engine-room telegraph only shook its
bearded head above the splash, the racket, and the clouds of smoke
in which the tug, backing and filling in the smother of churning
paddle-wheels behaved like a ferocious and impatient creature. He had
her manned by the cheekiest gang of lascars I ever did see, whom he
allowed to bawl at you insolently, and, once fast, he plucked you out
of your berth as if he did not care what he smashed. Eighteen miles down
the river you had to go behind him, and then three more along the
coast to where a group of uninhabited rocky islets enclosed a sheltered
anchorage. There you would have to lie at single anchor with your naked
spars showing to seaward over these barren fragments of land scattered
upon a very intensely blue sea. There was nothing to look at besides but
a bare coast, the muddy edge of the brown plain with the sinuosities
of the river you had left, traced in dull green, and the Great Pagoda
uprising lonely and massive with shining curves and pinnacles like the
gorgeous and stony efflorescence of tropical rocks. You had nothing to
do but to wait fretfully for the balance of your cargo, which was sent
out of the river with the greatest irregularity. And it was open to
you to console yourself with the thought that, after all, this stage
of bother meant that your departure from these shores was indeed
approaching at last.

We both had to go through that stage, Hermann and I, and there was a
sort of tacit emulation between the ships as to which should be ready
first. We kept on neck and neck almost to the finish, when I won
the race by going personally to give notice in the forenoon; whereas
Hermann, who was very slow in making up his mind to go ashore, did not
get to the agents' office till late in the day. They told him there that
my ship was first on turn for next morning, and I believe he told them