"Don't be too hasty, my dear lieutenant," I replied laughing. "Just wait
until to-night, and then I am sure that you will repent and take your
faithful friend back into the service."

"Are we going to keep above the water to-night, Herr Captain-Lieutenant,
or are we to submerge?" he asked me.

"It depends on what comes up," I answered. "It rests as usual with the
weather."

Thus we were talking and smoking on the conning tower while our eyes
scanned the horizon and kept a sharp lookout all around us.

On the little platform, which in a sharp angle triangle unites itself
from behind with the tower, the subordinate officer corporal was on
guard, and with a skin cloth was cleaning the lenses on his double
spy-glass, which were wet.

"Did you also get a dousing, Krappohl?" I asked. "Then you didn't look
out, either. That rascal soaked my cigarette just as he did the lenses
on your spy-glass. That's the dickens of a trick."

With the word "rascal" I meant the splashing wave, which, while the sea
was in a perfect calm, without any reason climbed up to us on the
tower. If there had been a storm it would have been nothing to mention.
Then we often did not have a dry thread on our bodies. But such a
shameless scoundrel, which in the midst of the most beautiful weather
suddenly throws himself over a person, is something to make one angry.

We made good speed. The water, which was thrown aside by the bow, passed
by us in two wide white formed streaks. The motor rattled and rumbled,
and the ventilation machine in the so-called "Centrale" right under our
feet made a monotonous buzzing. Through the only opening where the air
could pass out, the open tower hatch, all kinds of odors flowed one
after another from the lower regions right by our noses. First we
smelled smear-oil. Then the fragrance of oranges (we had with us a
large shipment, which we had received as a gift of love), and now--ah!
Now it was coffee, a strong aromatic coffee odor.

Lieutenant Petersen moved back and forth unrestingly on the "swimwest,"
with which he had tried to make it a little more comfortable for himself
on the hard sitting place, bent deeper and deeper down into the hatch
inhaling with greed the odor from below, and said, as he in pleasant
anticipation began to rub his hands together:

"Now we'll have coffee, Herr Captain-Lieutenant!"

I had just with a great deal of trouble pulled out a cigarette-case from
the inside pocket of my skin jacke