Part 16 (2/2)

Up in the loft he found Bramsen, lying at his ease on a couple of coffee-bags, studying a telegram.

”Hullo, Bramsen, what are you up to now?”

Bramsen half rose, and sat holding one hand to his forehead, waving the telegram in the other.

”Well, if this isn't the queerest....”

”There's a deal of queer things about just lately. What's happening now?”

”Why, you know I told you how I'd got all that worldly out of Andrine, when she joined the Salvation Army?”

”Well, has she come to her senses again?”

”Getting on that way, anyhow. It was just as I thought. When she got up this morning she began sort of throwing out hints that I'd better let her have the bank-book again after all.”

”Aha, that looks like coming round.”

”Well, you can guess I'd been expecting something of the sort, and so I started in a little speculation while there was time.”

”Not trying steamboats, I hope?”

”No, no. But I got wind of a good thing in another way altogether.

You know Johnsen I told you about?”

”Bramsen, don't tell me you've got mixed up in any sort of deal with that drunken old fool?”

”Drunk? He's as right as can be now. Turned teetotal, and made some money too. Any amount. Well, last week he came along to me and said he and Baron Olsen had gone shares and bought up a boat that was lying at Strandvik--_Erik_ was the name. They'd got her dirt cheap, but they'd let me come in for a third share, and be managing owner, with Johnsen as skipper. Well, I agreed. The _Erik_ went off last week, and now here comes a telegram from some place called Havre; but it's a queer sort of message. I can't make head or tail of it myself.

Here, see what it says: 'Drink dock yesterday.--JOHNSEN.' Drunk in dock, if you ask me--and him a teetot'lar and all!”

Holm took the telegram and read it over, but could make nothing of it. ”Drink dock yesterday” was all it said.

”Well, it's something to do with drink, anyway, by the look of it--whether he means he got drunk in dock, or drank the dock dry to be out of temptation, he's probably got delirium tremens by this time, and drunk the s.h.i.+p as well.”

”Holm--you don't think he's gone off the rails again--honestly?”

Bramsen jumped up from his couch and stood aghast.

”Well, whatever did you want to be such a fool for, Bramsen? Managing owner indeed--why, you've no more idea of managing than those coffee-bags.”

”Ho, haven't I? And me been round the Horn and Cape of Good Hope as well, and nearly eaten by crocodiles in Bahia, dead of yellow fever, and all but burned in Rio, an ear with frostbite in the Arctic, been shooting monkeys in Mozambique.”

”Monkey yourself, if you ask me.”

”That may be; but, anyhow, you can't say I don't know anything about s.h.i.+pping. Your smart s.h.i.+powners sitting all day in their offices and looking out places on the map, you suppose they know more about it than me that's been thirty years navigating on my own all over the torrential globe. I'm not good enough to manage a bit of a s.h.i.+p myself, eh? I'm a plain man, I know, but I'm no fool for all that, and I don't see what call you've got to go throwing wet blankets on all my deals and doings anyhow.”

Bramsen was thoroughly offended now, and Holm found it difficult to bring him round.

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