His disposition, unlike
the widower's, appeared to be mild and humane. He offered me the loan of
his glasses. He had a wife and some small children concealed in the
depths of the ship, and he thought they were very well where they were.
His eldest son was about the decks somewhere.
"We are Americans," he remarked weightily, but in a rather peculiar tone.
He spoke English with the accent of our captain's "wonderful people," and
proceeded to give me the history of the family's crossing the Atlantic in
a White Star liner. They remained in England just the time necessary for
a railway journey from Liverpool to Harwich. His people (those in the
depths of the ship) were naturally a little tired.
At that moment a young man of about twenty, his son, rushed up to us from
the fore-deck in a state of intense elation. "Hurrah," he cried under
his breath. "The first German light! Hurrah!"
And those two American citizens shook hands on it with the greatest
fervour, while I turned away and received full in the eyes the brilliant
wink of the Borkum lighthouse squatting low down in the darkness. The
shade of the night had settled on the North Sea.
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