wait till Falk in person had spoken with him. There remained some small
matter to talk over, as I understood.

He sat down again at once, full of suspicion.

"What matter?" he said surlily. "I have had enough of his nonsense.
There's no matter at all, as he knows very well; the girl has nothing in
the world. She came to us in one thin dress when my brother died, and I
have a growing family."

"It can't be anything of that kind," I opined. "He's desperately
enamoured of your niece. I don't know why he did not say so before. Upon
my word, I believe it is because he was afraid to lose, perhaps, the
felicity of sitting near her on your quarter deck."

I intimated my conviction that his love was so great as to be in a sense
cowardly. The effects of a great passion are unaccountable. It has
been known to make a man timid. But Hermann looked at me as if I had
foolishly raved; and the twilight was dying out rapidly.

"You don't believe in passion, do you, Hermann?" I said cheerily. "The
passion of fear will make a cornered rat courageous. Falk's in a corner.
He will take her off your hands in one thin frock just as she came to
you. And after ten years' service it isn't a bad bargain," I added.

Far from taking offence, he resumed his air of civic virtue. The sudden
night came upon him while he stared placidly along the deck, bringing in
contact with his thick lips, and taking away again after a jet of smoke,
the curved mouthpiece fitted to the stem of his pipe. The night came
upon him and buried in haste his whiskers, his globular eyes, his puffy