'We're off, Bartels,' said Davies, without looking up from his work.
'See you at Kiel, I hope.'

'You are always in a hurry, captain,' bleated the old man, shaking
his head. 'You should wait till to-morrow. The sky is not good, and
it will be dark before you are off Eckenförde.'

Davies laughed, and very soon his mentor's sad little figure was lost
in haze.

That was a curious evening. Dusk soon fell, and the devil made a
determined effort to unman me; first, with the scrambled tea which
was the tardy substitute for an orderly lunch, then with the new and
nauseous duty of filling the side-lights, which meant squatting in
the fo'c'sle to inhale paraffin and dabble in lamp-black; lastly,
with an all-round attack on my nerves as the night fell on our frail
little vessel, pitching on her precarious way through driving mist.
In a sense I think I went through the same sort of mental crisis as
when I sat upon my portmanteau at Flensburg. The main issue was not
seriously in question, for I had signed on in the Dulcibella for good
or ill; but in doing so I had outrun myself, and still wanted an
outlook, a mood suited to the enterprise, proof against petty
discouragements. Not for the first time a sense of the ludicrous came
to my assistance, as I saw myself fretting in London under my burden
of self-imposed woes, nicely weighing that insidious invitation, and
stepping finally into the snare with the dignity due to my
importance; kidnapped as neatly as ever a peaceful clerk was
kidnapped by a lawless press-gang, and, in the end, finding as the
arch-conspirator a guileless and warm-hearted friend, who called me
clever, lodged me in a cell, and blandly invited me to talk German to