his back on me he went away, thumping slowly the plank floor as if his
feet had been shod with iron.

Next morning, however, he was lively enough as man-boat, a combination
of splashing and shouting; of the insolent commotion below with the
steady overbearing glare of the silent head-piece above. He turned us
out most unnecessarily at an ungodly hour, but it was nearly eleven
in the morning before he brought me up a cable's length from Hermann's
ship. And he did it very badly too, in a hurry, and nearly contriving to
miss altogether the patch of good holding ground, because, forsooth,
he had caught sight of Hermann's niece on the poop. And so did I; and
probably as soon as he had seen her himself. I saw the modest, sleek
glory of the tawny head, and the full, grey shape of the girlish print
frock she filled so perfectly, so satisfactorily, with the seduction of
unfaltering curves--a very nymph of Diana the Huntress. And Diana the
ship sat, high-walled and as solid as an institution, on the smooth
level of the water, the most uninspiring and respectable craft upon the
seas, useful and ugly, devoted to the support of domestic virtues like
any grocer's shop on shore. At once Falk steamed away; for there was
some work for him to do. He would return in the evening.

He ranged close by us, passing out dead slow, without a hail. The beat
of the paddle-wheels reverberating amongst the stony islets, as if from
the ruined walls of a vast arena, filled the anchorage confusedly with
the clapping sounds of a mighty and leisurely applause. Abreast of
Hermann's ship he stopped the engines; and a profound silence reigned
over the rocks, the shore and the sea, for the time it took him to raise
his hat aloft before the nymph of the grey print frock. I had snatched
up my binoculars, and I can answer for it she didn't stir a limb,
standing by the rail shapely and erect, with one of her hands grasping a