The Astara is loaded up.  The hold is not big enough, and a good deal of the cargo has overflowed onto the deck.  The stern is reserved for passengers, but from the bridge forward to the topgallant forecastle, there is a heap of cases covered with tarpaulins to protect them from the sea.

There Ephrinell’s cases have been put.  He has lent a hand with Yankee energy, determined not to lose sight of his valuable property, which is in cubical cases, about two feet on the side, covered with patent leather, carefully strapped, and on which can be read the stenciled words, “Strong, Bulbul & Co., Now York.”

“Are all your goods on board?” I asked the American.

“There is the forty-second case just coming,” he replied.

And there was the said case on the back of a porter already coming along the gangway.

It seemed to me that the porter was rather tottery, owing perhaps to a lengthy absorption of vodka.

“Wait a bit!” shouted Ephrinell.  Then in good Russian, so as to be better understood, he shouted: 

“Look out!  Look out!”

It is good advice, but it is too late.  The porter has just made a false step.  The case slips from his shoulders, falls—­luckily over the rail of the Astara—­breaks in two, and a quantity of little packets of paper scatter their contents on the deck.

What a shout of indignation did Ephrinell raise!  What a whack with his fist did he administer to the unfortunate porter as he repeated in a voice of despair:  “My teeth, my poor teeth!”

And he went down on his knees to gather up his little bits of artificial ivory that were scattered all about, while I could hardly keep from laughing.

Yes!  It was teeth which Strong, Bulbul & Co., of New York made!  It was for manufacturing five thousand cases a week for the five parts of the world that this huge concern existed!  It was for supplying the dentists of the old and new worlds; it was for sending teeth as far as China, that their factory required fifteen hundred horse power, and burned a hundred tons of coal a day!  That is quite American!

After all, the population of the globe is fourteen hundred million, and as there are thirty-two teeth per inhabitant, that makes forty-five thousand millions; so that if it ever became necessary to replace all the true teeth by false ones, the firm of Strong, Bulbul & Co. would not be able to supply them.

But we must leave Ephrinell gathering up the odontological treasures of the forty-second case.  The bell is ringing for the last time.  All the passengers are aboard.  The Astara is casting off her warps.

Suddenly there are shouts from the quay.  I recognize them as being in German, the same as I had heard at Tiflis when the train was starting for Baku.

It is the same man.  He is panting, he runs, he cannot run much farther.  The gangway has been drawn ashore, and the steamer is already moving off.  How will this late comer get on board?