"Ten marks at least."
"He must have stolen it," the jeweller whispers again. "It is
valuable. Give him twenty marks for it to get it quickly. Then
follow me to my store, and I will give you a hundred."
Delighted at the opportunity to make some money on land, I give the
man twenty marks for the ring. He hurries away. I look for the
jeweller, whom I am to follow. He has disappeared. At a bona fide
jeweller's I am told:
"It is a rhinestone, not a bad value for three marks."
Tedje and I take in the Hamburg Dom. From the rows of booths come
promises of unparalleled sights. The sights we see in strange lands
don't interest us, but at carnivals ashore it is different.
"Step in, step in," a barker howls, "and see what nobody ever saw or
ate."
"What is it?" Tedje demands cautiously.
"Step in, and you will hear a canary bird talking Plattdeutsch, Low
German. Five hundred marks reward if the bird does not talk
Plattdeutsch."
We have never heard a canary bird talking any language, least of all
Plattdeutsch. We join the crowd going in.
A canary bird in a cage is brought on to the platform. An elegantly
dressed gentleman announces:
"Permit me to introduce this bird to you. His name is Hans."
"Never mind," shouts a sailor, "we want to hear him talk Deutsch."
"You will hear him, gentlemen. Hans--" and now he speaks in the
Plattdeutsch dialect--"Hans, tell me what I should smoke, a cigar or
a pipe." He pronounces the word pipe as "peep," in Plattdeutsch
fashion.
In response the canary bird twitters:
"Peep."
"There, you see, gentlemen, the bird has talked Plattdeutsch."
There is loud laughter, and we all go out and tell the other suckers
that the bird talked Deutsch. Why should we be the only fools?
Perhaps Jack Tar gets engaged to be married to the daughter of a
"crimp." That costs him all his money. Or he gets drunk and
everything is taken away from him.
Hein and Tedje meet back on their ship.
"Well, Tedje, how did Munich strike you?"
Tedje, who did not get away from the Hamburg water front, merely asks
in turn:
"Did you get your gramophone?"
Although the North Sea may not be exactly the sailor's friend, the
disillusioned tars are glad when sail is raised and they see water
all around them once more.
At sea the sailor is on terms of intimacy with nature. He is
friendly with the stars. He understands the clouds, and upon them he
relies to tell him about the weather. He knows most of the fishes he
encounters, although there are very few kinds that can be caught with
hook and line from deck. When a school of porpoises appears, the
command comes:
"Get the harpoons ready!"
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[Illustration: The prosaic American clipper, _Pass of Balmaha_, bound
for Russia with a cargo of cotton, by the alchemy of war became the
mysterious _Seeadler_ preying on Allied shipping until a coral reef
of the South Pacific ended its seven months' cruise of destruction.]
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[Illustration: The _Seeadler_, that carried the modern buccaneer
whose dare-devil adventures were to out-rival the high-handed days of
the Spanish Main. From a sketch made from the photograph taken by
the captain of the _Antonin_. See page 167.