then, and I suppose had no money to spare for dredging operations. I
don't know how it may be now, but at the time I speak of that sandbank
was a great nuisance to the shipping. One of its consequences was that
vessels of a certain draught of water, like Hermann's or mine, could not
complete their loading in the river. After taking in as much as possible
of their cargo, they had to go outside to fill up. The whole procedure
was an unmitigated bore. When you thought you had as much on board as
your ship could carry safely over the bar, you went and gave notice to
your agents. They, in their turn, notified Falk that so-and-so was ready
to go out. Then Falk (ostensibly when it fitted in with his other work,
but, if the truth were known, simply when his arbitrary spirit moved
him), after ascertaining carefully in the office that there was enough
money to meet his bill, would come along unsympathetically, glaring
at you with his yellow eyes from the bridge, and would drag you out
dishevelled as to rigging, lumbered as to the decks, with unfeeling
haste, as if to execution. And he would force you too to take the end of
his own wire hawser, for the use of which there was of course an extra
charge. To your shouted remonstrances against that extortion this
towering trunk with one hand on the engine-room telegraph only shook its
bearded head above the splash, the racket, and the clouds of smoke
in which the tug, backing and filling in the smother of churning
paddle-wheels behaved like a ferocious and impatient creature. He had
her manned by the cheekiest gang of lascars I ever did see, whom he
allowed to bawl at you insolently, and, once fast, he plucked you out
of your berth as if he did not care what he smashed. Eighteen miles down
the river you had to go behind him, and then three more along the
coast to where a group of uninhabited rocky islets enclosed a sheltered
anchorage. There you would have to lie at single anchor with your naked
spars showing to seaward over these barren fragments of land scattered
upon a very intensely blue sea. There was nothing to look at besides but