Davies, who was laying the breakfast.

'Well, we can't do anything till this fog lifts,' he answered, with a
good deal of resignation. Breakfast was a cheerless meal. The damp
penetrated to the very cabin, whose roof and walls wept a fine dew. I
had dreaded a bathe, and yet missed it, and the ghastly light made
the tablecloth look dirtier than it naturally was, and all the
accessories more sordid. Something had gone wrong with the bacon, and
the lack of egg-cups was not in the least humorous.

Davies was just beginning, in his summary way, to tumble the things
together for washing tip, when there was a sound of a step on deck,
two sea-boots appeared on the ladder, and, before we could wonder who
the visitor was, a little man in oilskins and a sou'-wester was
stooping towards us in the cabin door, smiling affectionately at
Davies out of a round grizzled beard.

'Well met, captain,' he said, quietly, in German. 'Where are you
bound to this time?'

'Bartels!' exclaimed Davies, jumping up. The two stooping figures,
young and old, beamed at one another like father and son.

'Where have you come from? Have some coffee. How's the Johannes? Was
that you that came in last night? I'm delighted to see you!' (I spare
the reader his uncouth lingo.) The little man was dragged in and
seated on the opposite sofa to me.

'I took my apples to Kappeln,' he said, sedately, 'and now I sail to
Kiel, and so to Hamburg, where my wife and children are. It is my