merely a profitable voyage would be required
in order to console the embarrassed merchant, for his home at
Sandsgaard was empty and desolate. Youth and social pleasures had
fled, and little remained but bygone memories of gay friends and
brilliant ladies; a faint odour of the past lingering in
out-of-the-way corners, and causing his heart to beat again.

Ever since the death of his wife in the past summer, all the
reception-rooms had been closed. Both his sons were abroad, Christian
Frederik in London, and Richard in Stockholm; and Consul Garman, who
had always been accustomed to gay company, found that living alone
with the sisters of his deceased wife--two elderly spinsters who
quarrelled over the management of his domestic affairs--was not very
exhilarating.

As Jacob Worse, standing on the deck of his good ship, gazed at the
stir along the wharves and round about the bay, his heart swelled
with pride.

All the boats in the place came rowing out towards the brig. The
relatives of his men, the mothers and the sweethearts, waved
handkerchiefs and wept for joy. Many of them had, indeed, long since
given up the _Hope_ as lost.

No relations came out to welcome Skipper Worse. He was a widower, and
his only son was away at a commercial school in Lubeck. What he
looked forward to was talking about Rio with the other captains at
his club, but the chief pleasure in store for him was the yarns he
would spin with Skipper Randulf.

What would Randulf's much-boasted voyage to Taganrog be, compared
with Rio? Would not he--Worse--just lay it on thickly?

In his younger days Jacob Worse had been a little wild, and was now a
jovial middle-aged man, about fifty years of age.

His body was thickset and short, his face that of a seaman--square,
ruddy, frank, and pleasant. If any one could have counted the hairs
upon his head, the result would have been surprising, for they were
as close as on an otter's skin, and growing in a peculiar manner.
They looked as if a whirlwind had first attacked the crown of his
head from behind, twisting up a spiral tuft in the centre, and laying
the remainder flat, pointing forwards, along the sides. It seemed as
if his hair had remained fixed and unmoved ever since. About his ears
there were rows of small curls, like the ripple-marks on sand after a
breeze of wind.

When Jacob Worse saw the "ladies' boat"[1] waiting, ready manned,
alongside the quay, he rubbed his hands with delight, for this