fast--he protested it was shameful to come upon a man in that way.
Shameful! Yet such was the power Falk had on the river that when I
suggested in a chilling tone that he might have simply refused to have
his ship moved, Hermann was quite startled at the idea. I never realised
so well before that this is an age of steam. The exclusive possession
of a marine boiler had given Falk the whip-hand of us all. Hermann,
recovering, put it to me appealingly that I knew very well how unsafe it
was to contradict that fellow. At this I only smiled distantly.

"Der Kerl!" he cried. He was sorry he had not refused. He was indeed.
The damage! The damage! What for all that damage! There was no occasion
for damage. Did I know how much damage he had done? It gave me a certain
satisfaction to tell him that I had heard his old waggon of a ship crack
fore and aft as she went by. "You passed close enough to me," I added
significantly.

He threw both his hands up to heaven at the recollection. One of them
grasped by the middle the white parasol, and he resembled curiously
a caricature of a shop-keeping citizen in one of his own German comic
papers. "Ach! That was dangerous," he cried. I was amused. But directly
he added with an appearance of simplicity, "The side of your iron ship
would have been crushed in like--like this matchbox."

"Would it?" I growled, much less amused now; but by the time I had
decided that this remark was not meant for a dig at me he had
worked himself into a high state of resentfulness against Falk. The
inconvenience, the damage, the expense! Gottferdam! Devil take the
fellow. Behind the bar Schomberg with a cigar in his teeth, pretended
to be writing with a pencil on a large sheet of paper; and as Hermann's
excitement increased it made me comfortingly aware of my own calmness