ngainly vessel was a miracle I never understood.
Phlegmatically impervious to rain and cold, he steered the 'Johannes'
down the long grey reaches in the wake of the tug, while we and
Bartels held snug gatherings down below, sometimes in his cabin,
sometimes in ours. The heating arrangements of the latter began to be
a subject of serious concern. We finally did the only logical thing,
and brought the kitchen-range into the parlour, fixing the
Rippingille stove on the forward end of the cabin table, where it
could warm as well as cook for us. As an ornament it was monstrous,
and the taint of oil which it introduced was a disgusting drawback;
but, after all, the great thing--as Davies said--is to be
comfortable, and after that to be clean.

Davies held long consultations with Bartels, who was thoroughly at
home in the navigation of the sands we were bound for, his own boat
being a type of the very craft which ply in them. I shall not forget
the moment when it first dawned on him that his young friend's
curiosity was practical; for he had thought that our goal was his own
beloved Hamburg, queen of cities, a place to see and die.

'It is too late,' he wailed. 'You do not know the Nord See as I do.'

'Oh, nonsense, Bartels, it's quite safe.'

'Safe! And have I not found you fast on Hohenhoern, in a storm, with
your rudder broken? God was good to you then, my son.'

'Yes, but it wasn't my f--' Davies checked himself. 'We're going
home. There's nothing in that.' Bartels became sadly resigned.

'It is good that you have a friend,' was his last word on the
subject; but all the same he always glanced at me with a rather
doubtful eye. As to Davies and myself, our friendship developed
quickly on certain limited lines, the chief obstacle, as I well know
now, being his reluctance to talk about the personal side of our
quest.

On the other hand, I spoke about my own life and interests, with an
unsparing discernment, of which I should have been incapable a month
ago, and in return I gained the key to his own character. It was
devotion to the sea, wedded to a fire of pent-up patriotism
struggling incessantly for an outlet in strenuous physical
expression; a humanity, born of acute sensitiveness to his own
limitations, only adding fuel to the flame. I learnt for the first
time now that in early youth he had failed for the navy, the first of
several failures in his career. 'And I can't settle down to anything
else,' he said. 'I re