And as for being handsomely treated! It was a thankless task if ever there was one. When Anders appeared with his seventh wire in one day, Soren almost flew at him. "What, you there again with more of those infernal telegram things!"
Soren Braaten had had more telegrams the last fortnight than in all his life before; and, worst of all, they were so briefly worded, it took him all his time to make out the sense. If things went on at this rate he would very soon be wanting another cure at Sandefjord, and this time in earnest.
There was never any rest, this steamer of his flew about at such a rate; just when you thought she was in England she'd be somewhere down the Mediterranean or the Black Sea. Soren said as much to his old friend Skipper Sorensen, who answered: "Better be careful, lad, or she'll run so fast one day she'll run away with all your money." And Soren was anxious about that very thing, for the remittance seemed to him rather small in comparison with the length of voyage involved.
Soren found himself at last hopelessly at sea both as to charters and accounts, and confided to Cilia one day that he was going to throw up the whole thing; as far as he was concerned, "the wretched boat can manage itself."
Cilia thought over the matter seriously. Her first idea was to take over the chartering herself, but when Soren began talking about freight from Wolgast to Salonica, and Rouen to Montechristi, her geography failed her.
Fixing the old _Apollo_ or _Birkebeineren_ for voyages in the Baltic or the North Sea was easy enough. Cilia knew the name of every port from Pitea to Vlaardingen, from London to Kirkwall, but outside the English Channel she was lost.
The end of it was that Soren went in to Christiania and got a broker he knew there to take over the business, and glad he was to get rid of it. The week after, he went on board _Birkebeineren_, rigged her up, and sailed with a cargo of planks to Amsterdam. Even though he made little out of it beyond his keep, it was nicer than sitting at home in a state of eternal worry about the steamer.
"It pays better than the savings bank, anyway," said Cilia, when he grumbled.
"Maybe; but it's a wearisome business all the same, this steam chartering. And we've other things to think about but what pays best."