in a pair of black shoes as roomy as punts. On arrival he would
shake Hermann's hand with a mutter, bow to the women, and take up his
careless and misanthropic attitude by our side. He departed abruptly,
with a jump, going through the performance of grunts, handshakes, bow,
as if in a panic. Sometimes, with a sort of discreet and convulsive
effort, he approached the women and exchanged a few low words with them,
half a dozen at most. On these occasions Hermann's usual stare became
positively glassy and Mrs. Hermann's kind countenance would colour up.
The girl herself never turned a hair.

Falk was a Dane or perhaps a Norwegian, I can't tell now. At all events
he was a Scandinavian of some sort, and a bloated monopolist to boot.
It is possible he was unacquainted with the word, but he had a clear
perception of the thing itself. His tariff of charges for towing ships
in and out was the most brutally inconsiderate document of the sort I
had ever seen. He was the commander and owner of the only tug-boat on
the river, a very trim white craft of 150 tons or more, as elegantly
neat as a yacht, with a round wheel-house rising like a glazed turret
high above her sharp bows, and with one slender varnished pole mast
forward. I daresay there are yet a few shipmasters afloat who remember
Falk and his tug very well. He extracted his pound and a half of
flesh from each of us merchant-skippers with an inflexible sort of
indifference which made him detested and even feared. Schomberg used to
remark: "I won't talk about the fellow. I don't think he has six drinks
from year's end to year's end in my place. But my advice is, gentlemen,
don't you have anything to do with him, if you can help it."

This advice, apart from unavoidable business relations, was easy to
follow because Falk intruded upon no one. It seems absurd to compare a
tugboat skipper to a centaur: but he reminded me somehow of an engraving
in a little book I had as a boy, which represented centaurs at a stream,
and there was one, especially in the foreground, prancing bow and arrows
in hand, with regular severe features and an immense curled wavy beard,
flowing down his breast. Falk's face reminded me of that centaur.
Besides, he was a composite creature. Not a man-horse, it is true, but
a man-boat. He lived on board his tug, which was always dashing up and
down the river from early morn till dewy eve.

In the last rays of the setting sun, you could pick out far away down