“But they—­they’ll—­they might kill you!”

“Not much ... those days are about gone ... for a man who knows how to handle himself, as I do....

“Well, let us thank God,” he finished, “for the Sailors’ Aid Society and the dear old maids at Sydney!”

I walked off, thinking.  Franz had sworn me not to tell.  Yet I was tempted to.  It would get me in right with Captain Schantze.

* * * * *

We shaped to the Cape of Good Hope with great, southern jumps.  We were striking far south for the strong, steady winds.

* * * * *

“There was a damned English ship, the Lord Summerville, that left New York about the same time we did ... she’s a sky-sailer ... we mustn’t let her beat us into Sydney.”

“Why not, Captain?”

“An Englishman beat a German!” the captain spat, “fui!  We’re going to beat England yet at everything ... already we’re taking their world-trade away from them ... and some day we’ll beat them at sea and on land, both.”

“In a war, sir?”

“Yes, in a war ... in a great, big war!  It will have to come to that, Johann, my boy.”

* * * * *

The cook’s opinion on the same subject was illuminating.

He told me many anecdotes which tended to prove that even England’s colonies were growing tired of her arrogance:  he related droll stories told him by Colonials about the Queen ... obscene and nasty they were, too.

“Catch a German talking that way about the Kaiserin!”

The old cook couldn’t realize a peculiarity of the Anglo-Saxon temperament—­that those they rail against and jibe at they love the most!

* * * * *

Off the Tristan da Cunha Islands we ran head-on into a terrific storm ... one that lasted forty-eight hours or more, with rushing, screaming winds, and steady, stinging blasts of sleet that came thick in successions of driving, grey cloud.

It was then that we lost overboard a fine, handsome young Saxon, one Gottlieb Kampke: 

Five men aloft ... only four came down ...  Kampke was blown overboard off the footrope that ran under the yard, as he stood there hauling in on the sail.  For he was like a young bull in strength; and, scorning, in his strength, the tearing wind, he used to heave in with both hands ... not holding fast at all, no matter how hard the wind tore.

* * * * *

It was all that the ship herself could do, to live.  Already two lifeboats had been bashed in.  And the compass stanchioned on the bridge had gone along with a wave, stanchions and all.

* * * * *

There was no use trying to rescue Gottlieb Kampke.  Besides, he would be dead as soon as he reached the water, in such a boiling sea, the captain said to me.