On this
occasion it happened to be Charlie Jones. Jones was not his name,
so far as I know. It was some inordinately long and different
German inheritance, and so, with the facility of the average crew,
he had been called Jones. He was a benevolent little man, highly
religious, and something of a philosopher. And because I could
understand German, and even essay it in a limited way, he was fond
of me.
"Seta du dick," he said, and moved over so that I could sit on the
grating on which he stood. "The sky is fine to-night. Wunderschon!"
"It always looks good to me," I observed, filling my pipe and
passing my tobacco-bag to him. "I may have my doubts now and then
on land, Charlie; but here, between the sky and the sea, I'm a
believer, right enough."
"'In the beginning He created the heaven and the earth,'" said
Charlie reverently.
We were silent for a time. The ship rolled easily; now and then
she dipped her bowsprit with a soft swish of spray; a school of
dolphins played astern, and the last of the land birds that had
followed us out flew in circles around the masts.
"Sometimes," said Charlie Jones, "I think the Good Man should have
left it the way it was after the flood just sky and water. What's
the land, anyhow? Noise and confusion, wickedness and crime,
robbing the widow and the orphan, eat or be et.
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