scornfully, "why, I could not get a wink of
sleep for your snoring."

"I never snore," said Worse decisively; "besides, I have been awake
all the time you were sleeping."

"Sleeping! I tell you I never slept."

"Come, I am the best judge of that, I who sat here and--

"And snored; yes, that you did, and like a hero."

They wrangled on for a few moments, until they were both thoroughly
awake.

Upon this they lit their pipes, and put on their coats--at Randulf's
they always sat in their shirt sleeves, which was a treat to Worse.
At home it was never allowed.

Afterwards the two old skippers sauntered about the wharves, peeped
into the warehouses and the rope-walk, discussed the vessels in the
harbour, and, with highly disparaging comments, examined a ship which
was building by the wharf.

At every point they fell in with acquaintances, with whom they
gossiped. Randulf was in excellent spirits, and Worse also roused
himself, although he was not as he had been in old days.

Such a tour as this through the town was something new and unusual to
him, for of late he had never been much beyond his own warehouse.

There was something strange about him, which he himself was unable to
comprehend; but from the moment when he gave up the _Hope_ to others,
he had nearly lost all interest in his old calling.

Indeed, it was almost painful to him now to see a vessel in the fjord
under full sail; formerly such a sight was the finest he knew.

To-day, however, Randulf had quite thawed him; he became lively, and
even swore twice without being aware of it. This greatly comforted
his friend.

Like Consul Garman, Randulf grieved that Jacob Worse had, as he
termed it, stranded himself.

He teased him no longer; it would be of no use. At the club, over a
tumbler of warm toddy, Randulf would confide to his friends how sad
it was to see so splendid a seaman as Jacob Worse spoilt by a pack of
women.

He used to wind up his lamentations with "that confounded tub of a
ship from Rostock," alluding to the Rostock trader, with which he had
been in collision at Bolderaa.

It was his firm belief that if he, Randulf, had been at home, they
should never have trapped Jacob Worse.

At seven o'clock they turned back to Randulf's little house, in high
spirits, and ravenously hungry.

When they had again eaten--and Worse had not had such an appetite for
many a day--they took their steaming tumblers of toddy to the open
window, and the