However, I had put a very keen edge indeed upon my appetite one bitter November afternoon, when, prowling along the Coburg Dock Quay, I was suddenly brought up “all standing” by a most maddening smell of soup. With dilated nostrils I drew in the fragrant breeze, and immediately located its source as the galley of a barque that lay near, loading. I must have looked hungry as I swiftly came alongside of her, for the broad-faced cook, who was standing at his galley-door swabbing his steaming face after his sultry sojourn within, presently caught sight of me and lifted a beckoning finger. I was by his side in two bounds, and before I had quite realized my good fortune I was loading up at a great rate from a comfortably-sized dish of plum soup. My benefactor said nothing as the eager spoonfuls passed, but lolled against the door placidly regarding me with much the same expression as one would a hungry dog with a just-discovered bone. When at last I was well distended, he asked me a few questions in a queer broken English that I immediately recognized as the German version. What was I? Where did I come from? Would I like to go to sea? And so on. Eagerly and hopefully I answered him, much to his amazement; for, like every other seaman I fell in with in those days, he found it hard to believe that I had already been nearly two years at sea, so small and weak did I appear. But the upshot of our interview was that he introduced me to the skipper, a burly North German, who, looking stolidly down upon me, between the regular puffs of smoke from his big pipe, said--
“Vell, poy; ju dinks ju like du komm in a Cherman scheep--hein?”
I faltered out a few words, not very coherently, I am afraid, for the prospect of getting any ship at all was just like a glimpse of heaven to me. Fortunately for my hopes, Captain Strauss was a man of action, so, cutting short my faltering reply, he resumed: “All righdt. Ve yoost loosd a leedle Engelsch boy lige ju. He pin mit me more as ein jeer, gabin-poy, und mein vife lige him fery vell. Ju do so goot as him, ju vas all righdt. Vat ju call jorselluf--hein?”
“Ya; den ve call ju Dahn. Dat oder poy ve calls Dahn, und so ju gomes all der same for him--aind it?”