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 and superiority.  But it occurred to me while I listened to his revilings, that after all the good man had come up in the tug.  There perhaps—­since he must come to town—­he had no option.  But evidently he had had a drink with Falk, either accepted or offered.  How was that?  So I checked him by saying loftily that I hoped he would make Falk pay for every penny of the damage.

“That’s it!  That’s it!  Go for him,” called out Schomberg from the bar, flinging his pencil down and rubbing his hands.

We ignored his noise.  But Hermann’s excitement suddenly went off the boil as when you remove a saucepan from the fire.  I urged on his consideration that he had done now with Falk and Falk’s confounded tug.  He, Hermann, would not, perhaps, turn up again in this part of the world for years to come, since he was going to sell the Diana at the end of this very trip ("Go home passenger in a mail boat,” he murmured mechanically).  He was therefore safe from Falk’s malice.  All he had to do was to race off to his consignees and stop payment of the towage bill before Falk had the time to get in and lift the money.

Nothing could have been less in the spirit of my advice than the thoughtful way in which he set about to make his parasol stay propped against the edge of the table.

While I watched his concentrated efforts with astonishment he threw at me one or two perplexed, half-shy glances.  Then he sat down.  “That’s all very well,” he said reflectively.

It cannot be doubted that the man had been thrown off his balance by being hauled out of the harbour against his wish.  His stolidity had been profoundly stirred, else he would never have made up his mind to ask me unexpectedly whether I had not remarked that Falk had been casting eyes upon his niece.  “No more than myself,” I answered with literal truth.  The girl was of the sort one necessarily casts eyes at in a sense.  She made no noise, but she filled most satisfactorily a good bit of space.

“But you, captain, are not the same kind of man,” observed Hermann.