“I saw the tug coming back from the outer Roads just before two P.M.”  (He never by any chance used the words morning or afternoon.  Always P.M. or A.M., log-book style.) “Smart work that.  Man’s always in a state of hurry.  He’s a regular chucker-out, ain’t he, sir?  There’s a few pubs I know of in the East-end of London that would be all the better for one of his sort around the bar.”  He chuckled at his joke.  “A regular chucker-out.  Now he has fired out that Dutchman head over heels, I suppose our turn’s coming to-morrow morning.”

We were all on deck at break of day (even the sick—­poor devils—­had crawled out) ready to cast off in the twinkling of an eye.  Nothing came.  Falk did not come.  At last, when I began to think that probably something had gone wrong in his engine-room, we perceived the tug going by, full pelt, down the river, as if we hadn’t existed.  For a moment I entertained the wild notion that he was going to turn round in the next reach.  Afterwards I watched his smoke appear above the plain, now here, now there, according to the windings of the river.  It disappeared.  Then without a word I went down to breakfast.  I just simply went down to breakfast.

Not one of us uttered a sound till the mate, after imbibing—­by means of suction out of a saucer—­his second cup of tea, exclaimed:  “Where the devil is the man gone to?”

“Courting!” I shouted, with such a fiendish laugh that the old chap didn’t venture to open his lips any more.

I started to the office perfectly calm.  Calm with excessive rage.  Evidently they knew all about it already, and they treated me to a show of consternation.  The manager, a soft-footed, immensely obese man, breathing short, got up to meet me, while all round the room the young clerks, bending over the papers on their desks, cast upward glances in my direction.  The fat man, without waiting for my complaint, wheezing heavily and in a tone as if he himself were incredulous, conveyed to me the news that Falk—­Captain Falk—­had declined—­had absolutely declined—­to tow my ship—­to have anything to do with my ship—­this day or any other day.  Never!

I did my best to preserve a cool appearance, but, all the same, I must have shown how much taken aback I was.  We were talking in the middle of the room.  Suddenly behind my back some ass blew his nose with great force, and at the same time another quill-driver jumped up and went out on the landing hastily.  It occurred to me I was cutting a foolish figure there.  I demanded angrily to see the principal in his private room.

The skin of Mr. Siegers’ head showed dead white between the iron grey streaks of hair lying plastered cross-wise from ear to ear over the top of his skull in the manner of a bandage.  His narrow sunken face was of an uniform and permanent terra-cotta colour, like a piece of pottery.  He was sickly, thin, and short, with wrists like a boy of ten.  But from that debile body there issued a bullying voice,