xperiment of Esens and seek a primitive beer-house. I was less
lucky on this occasion. The house I chose was obscure enough, but its
proprietor was no simple Frisian, but an ill-looking rascal with
shifty eyes and a debauched complexion, who showed a most unwelcome
curiosity in his customer. As a last fatality, he wore a peaked cap
like my own, and turned out to be an ex-sailor. I should have fled at
the sight of him had I had the chance, but I was attended to first by
a slatternly girl who, I am sure, called him up to view me. To
explain my muddy boots and trousers I said I had walked from Esens,
and from that I found myself involved in a tangle of impromptu lies.
Floundering down an old groove, I placed my sister this time on
Baltrum Island, and said I was going to Dornumersiel (which is
opposite Baltrum) to cross from there. As this was drawing a bow at a
venture, I dared not assume local knowledge, and spoke of the visit
as my first. Dornumersiel was a lucky shot; there _was_ a
ferry-galliot from there to Baltrum; but he knew, or pretended to
know, Baltrum, and had not heard of my sister. I grew the more
nervous in that I saw from the first that he took me to be of better
condition than most merchant seamen; and, to make matters worse, I
was imprudent enough in pleading haste to pull out from an inner
pocket my gold watch with the chain and seals attached. He told me
there was no hurry, that I should miss the tide at Dornumersiel, and
then fell to pressing strong waters on me, and asking questions whose
insinuating grossness gave me the key to his biography: He must have
been at one stage in his career a dock-side crimp, one of those foul
sharks who prey on discharged seamen, and as often as not are
ex-seamen themselves, versed in the weaknesses of the tribe. He was
now keeping his hand in with me, who, unhappily, purported to belong
to the very class he was used to victimize, and, moreover, had a gold
watch, and, doubtless, a full purse. Nothing more ridiculously
inopportune could have befallen me, or more dangerous; for his class
are as cosmopolitan as waiters and _concierges,_ with as facile a
gift for language and as unerring a scent for nationality. Sure
enough, the fellow recognized mine, and positively challenged me with
it in fairly fluent English with a Yankee twang. Encumbered with the
mythical sister, of course I stuck to my lie, said I had been on an
English ship so long that I had picked up the accent, a