xpected, spoke the Frisian dialect, so that though he was rather
difficult to understand, he had no doubts about the purity of my own
German high accent. He was a worthy fellow, and hospitably
interested: 'Did I want a bed?' 'No; I was going on to Bensersiel,' I
said, 'to sleep there, and take the morning _Postschiff_ to Langeoog
Island.' (I had not forgotten our friends the twin giants and their
functions.) 'I was not an islander myself?' he asked. 'No, but I had
a married sister there; had just returned from a year's voyaging, and
was going to visit her.' 'By the way,' I asked, 'how are they getting
on with the Benser Tief?' My friend shrugged his shoulders; it was
finished, he believed. 'And the connexion to Wittmund?' 'Under
construction still.' 'Langeoog would be going ahead then?' 'Oh! he
supposed so, but he did not believe in these new-fangled schemes.'
'But it was good for trade, I supposed? Esens would benefit in
sending goods by the "tief"--what was the traffic, by the way?' 'Oh,
a few more barge-loads than before of bricks, timber, coals, etc.,
but it would come to nothing _he_ knew: _Aktiengesellschaften_
(companies) were an invention of the devil. A few speculators got
them up and made money themselves out of land and contracts, while
the shareholders they had hoodwinked starved.' 'There's something in
that,' I conceded to this bigoted old conservative; 'my sister at
Langeoog rents her lodging-house from a man named Dollmann; they say
he owns a heap of land about. I saw his yacht once--pink velvet and
electric light inside, they say----'

'That's the name,' said mine host, 'that's one of them--some sort of
foreigner, I've heard; runs a salvage concern, too, Juist way.'

'Well, he won't get any of my savings!' I laughed, and soon after
took my leave, and inquired from a passer-by the road to Dornum.
'Follow the railway,' I was told.

With a warm wind in my face from the south-west, fleecy clouds and a
half-moon overhead, I set out, not for Bensersiel but for Benser
Tief, which I knew must cross the road to Dornum somewhere. A mile or
so of cobbled causeway flanked with ditches and willows, and running
cheek by jowl with the railway track; then a bridge, and below me the
'Tief'; which was, in fact, a small canal. A rutty track left the
road, and sloped down to it one side; a rough siding left the
railway, and sloped down to it on the other.

I lit a pipe and sat on the parapet for a little. No one was
st