I sat before a glass of Hermann's beer, trying to look modest. Mrs.
Hermann would glance at me quickly, emit slight "Ach's!" The girl never
made a sound. Never. But she too would sometimes raise her pale eyes
to look at me in her unseeing gentle way. Her glance was by no means
stupid; it beamed out soft and diffuse as the moon beams upon a
landscape--quite differently from the scrutinising inspection of the
stars. You were drowned in it, and imagined yourself to appear blurred.
And yet this same glance when turned upon Christian Falk must have been
as efficient as the searchlight of a battle-ship.

Falk was the other assiduous visitor on board, but from his behaviour
he might have been coming to see the quarter-deck capstan. He certainly
used to stare at it a good deal when keeping us company outside the
cabin door, with one muscular arm thrown over the back of the chair, and
his big shapely legs, in very tight white trousers, extended far out and
ending in a pair of black shoes as roomy as punts. On arrival he would
shake Hermann's hand with a mutter, bow to the women, and take up his
careless and misanthropic attitude by our side. He departed abruptly,
with a jump, going through the performance of grunts, handshakes, bow,
as if in a panic. Sometimes, with a sort of discreet and convulsive
effort, he approached the women and exchanged a few low words with them,
half a dozen at most. On these occasions Hermann's usual stare became
positively glassy and Mrs. Hermann's kind countenance would colour up.
The girl herself never turned a hair.

Falk was a Dane or perhaps a Norwegian, I can't tell now. At all events
he was a Scandinavian of some sort, and a bloated monopolist to boot.
It is possible he was unacquainted with the word, but he had a clear
perception of the thing itself. His tariff of charges for towing ships
in and out was the most brutally inconsiderate document of the sort I