m at sea) to say idly and nonchalantly:

"And was this Hermann a hero?"

Not at all, said our grizzled friend. No hero at all. He was a
Schiff-fuhrer: Ship-conductor. That's how they call a Master Mariner
in Germany. I prefer our way. The alliteration is good, and there is
something in the nomenclature that gives to us as a body the sense
of corporate existence: Apprentice, Mate, Master, in the ancient and
honourable craft of the sea. As to my friend Hermann, he might have
been a consummate master of the honourable craft, but he was called
officially Schiff-fuhrer, and had the simple, heavy appearance of a
well-to-do farmer, combined with the good-natured shrewdness of a small
shopkeeper. With his shaven chin, round limbs, and heavy eyelids he did
not look like a toiler, and even less like an adventurer of the sea.
Still, he toiled upon the seas, in his own way, much as a shopkeeper
works behind his counter. And his ship was the means by which he
maintained his growing family.

She was a heavy, strong, blunt-bowed affair, awakening the ideas of
primitive solidity, like the wooden plough of our forefathers. And there
were, about her, other suggestions of a rustic and homely nature. The
extraordinary timber projections which I have seen in no other vessel
made her square stern resemble the tail end of a miller's waggon. But
the four stern ports of her cabin, glazed with six little greenish panes
each, and framed in wooden sashes painted brown, might have been the
windows of a cottage in the country. The tiny white curtains and the
greenery of flower pots behind the glass completed the resemblance. On
one or two occasions when passing under stern I had detected from my
boat a round arm in the act of tilting a watering pot, and the bowed
sleek head of a maiden whom I shall always call Hermann's niece, because
as a matter of fact I've never heard her name, for all my intimacy with
the family.

This, however, sprang up later on. Meantime in common with the rest
of the shipping in that Eastern port, I was left in no doubt as to
Hermann's notions of hygienic clothing. Evidently he believed in
wearing good stout flannel next his skin. On most days little frocks and
pinafores could be seen drying in the mizzen rigging of his ship, or
a tiny row of socks fluttering on the signal halyards; but once a
fortnight the family washing was exhibited in force. It covered the
poop entirely. The afternoon breeze would incite to a weird a