had ever seen. He was the commander and owner of the only tug-boat on
the river, a very trim white craft of 150 tons or more, as elegantly
neat as a yacht, with a round wheel-house rising like a glazed turret
high above her sharp bows, and with one slender varnished pole mast
forward. I daresay there are yet a few shipmasters afloat who remember
Falk and his tug very well. He extracted his pound and a half of
flesh from each of us merchant-skippers with an inflexible sort of
indifference which made him detested and even feared. Schomberg used to
remark: "I won't talk about the fellow. I don't think he has six drinks
from year's end to year's end in my place. But my advice is, gentlemen,
don't you have anything to do with him, if you can help it."

This advice, apart from unavoidable business relations, was easy to
follow because Falk intruded upon no one. It seems absurd to compare a
tugboat skipper to a centaur: but he reminded me somehow of an engraving
in a little book I had as a boy, which represented centaurs at a stream,
and there was one, especially in the foreground, prancing bow and arrows
in hand, with regular severe features and an immense curled wavy beard,
flowing down his breast. Falk's face reminded me of that centaur.
Besides, he was a composite creature. Not a man-horse, it is true, but
a man-boat. He lived on board his tug, which was always dashing up and
down the river from early morn till dewy eve.

In the last rays of the setting sun, you could pick out far away down
the reach his beard borne high up on the white structure, foaming up
stream to anchor for the night. There was the white-clad man's body, and
the rich brown patch of the hair, and nothing below the waist but the
'thwart-ship white lines of the bridge-screens, that lead the eye to the
sharp white lines of the bows cleaving the muddy water of the river.