A little Spitz ran back and forth on the deck of the lighter Cornelis de Vriendt, barking defiance at all the world and especially at me for my efforts to come aboard. Two fat Flemish babies clad only in shirts and no underclothes sat in the bow watching him.

“Hay, skipper,” I shouted, “where are you? Call off your dog!”

A gigantic shock of red hair appeared from the cabin, followed by a long face, prodigiously wrinkled, and a thin body in blue shirt and nondescript trousers, from which protruded broad red hands and naked feet. Like the babies, the captain stared at me in silence and made no move to come nearer.

“Are you the skipper?” I demanded, losing patience.

“Ja, mynheer.”

“Call off your dog. I’m the American delegate of the Relief Committee.”

“What, mynheer?”

I aimed a kick at the dancing, barking bundle of fur and feet, lost my balance on the edge of the wharf, and came down on the sloping deck of the Cornelis de Vriendt on all fours. The dog went wild, and the frightened babies howled, but the skipper watched motionless as before. “What did you say, mynheer?” he asked imperturbably.

It seemed no time for the French or Flemish languages. In an emotional crisis, such as a deathbed repentance or losing one’s heart or one’s temper, the tongue turns to the speech of youth, and I fell to cursing in most excellent and idiomatic English. The shock-head stared. “For God’s sake, sir,” he exclaimed at last, in English like my own, “are you a British spy?”

“A spy, you idiot? I’m the American delegate of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. What do you mean by staring at me like that and letting your crazy dog bark his head off at me? I’m the consignee of this cargo, and I’ve come to inspect it.”

The bargeman leaped to the peak of the vessel and came forward, his bare toes clutching the ridge of the deck, smacked the nearest infant into silence, swore at the dog, and came down to me. He drew an old cap from his pocket and began to clean my clothes, using the cap as a dust cloth. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said meekly, “but you see, sir, I has to be careful, wot with the Germans and all.”

“With that accent I should think you would have to be careful,” I retorted grimly.

“Ow no, sir,” he returned, “I’m a Belgian all right-o, but I ’ave served my time in the British navy.”

“And now you’re skipper of a barge!”

He smiled and scratched his head. “There was a woman, sir, as done me into doing it—leaving the navy, I mean. O’ course she wasn’t the first woman I ever see, but when I saw her I thort she was.”

“Well, you’re a funny one!” I exclaimed heartily, feeling a sudden kinship with the lanky red-crowned scarecrow before me—a kinship which would have been impossible without our common language. “Is this Queen of Sheba still travelling with you?”

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“Is your wife on board?”

“Yes, indeed, sir, and here are two of my little shavers.” He pointed with extraordinary pride at the half-naked youngsters clinging to their precarious seats on the sloping deck. “Fine little fellers, aren’t they, sir? I’ve got three children, and there is going to be a fourth. These is twins—both boys,” he said.

“So I see,” I retorted. The jest was lost on him. “Well, open up hatches and let’s look at your cargo.”

He bent to the fastenings and slipped off the round lead seals. “Funny thing about these Germans, sir, ’ow careful they are. That Johnny standing sentry-go over there”—he pointed to the lonely watch in the distance—, “’e always comes up and asks me for them little bits of lead. I gives ’em to ’im, sir. ’E gets paid for ’em and they don’t do me no good, so I gives ’em to him.” He lifted the first hatch, still chatting affably. “It’s a good lot o’ flour, sir, as I sees it. Only up at Rotterdam sometimes they has to unload too fast, and they piles it into the lighters in all kinds o’ weather. I’ve got forty-eight bags of bad flour in ’ere myself—spoilt by the rain in Rotterdam.”

“We can use it here for making dog bread.”

“They uses ’ooks on the bags, too, sir, and that ain’t right. Ortn’t to use no ’ooks. They always break the bags. Still, they’re a good sort up there, and they treat me right so far.... Now this flour, sir, it’s first rate—better than the Belgians is used to, if I do say it, and well stowed, ain’t it?” He dusted the white meal from his hands and replaced the hatches. “It ain’t bad, is it, sir?”

“Pretty good,” I answered.

“No, I don’t regret being skipper on a canal boat ’stead of hordinary seaman banging ’round in a cruiser’s forecastle and target-practising at the ’Uns. It’s an awful life, sea-faring is, sir. A man wot is a man owes it to himself to marry and settle down.”

“You certainly are a domestic animal, skipper.”

He grinned. “Yes, sir. Why, the first time I sawr ’er she was a-standing behind the till in a sweets-shop, in Flushing, and a-crying ’er pretty eyes out.”

“Who was?”

“Blimey! my wife! I thort I ’ad told you, sir.”

“You’ve told me nothing.”

“It’s an awful life, sea-faring is, sir——”

“You’ve told me that already, but what about your wife?”

“Ow, yes, sir. She was a-standing behind the counter in a sweets-shop and a-crying ’er pretty eyes out, and I come in just off the ship with a ’unger for sweets so strong my tongue was fair ’anging out of my mouth. (You gets that way banging round in a cruiser’s forecastle, sir.)

“Sniff—sniff—sniff—— ‘What’ll ye ’ave, mynheer?’ she says to me.

“‘Good-day juffrouw, and what’s the matter with you, my pretty dear?’ I says back at her. ‘I’ll ’ave a kiss,’ I says.

“‘You’ll ’ave nothing of the sort, you bad man,’ she says, wiping her eyes and glaring at me.

“‘Juffrouw,’ I says, free and easy, ‘I’m just off ship and I’m ’ungry—so ’ungry I could fair eat you—and I never see a pretty maid crying but I kiss ’er tears away. I ain’t been drinking either. I ain’t a drinking man.’

“I was serious for all my glib talk, sir. I was that serious as I’d never been in my life before; and, between ourselves, sir, though I ’ate to admit it, I didn’t kiss no tears away that day. She wouldn’t ’ave it.

“Wot was she weeping for? She’d just lorst ’er sweetheart, sir, that was wot for! ’E was a sheep-faced Dutchman—I sawr ’im afterward, I did, and he ’adn’t a merit to ’im. She didn’t really love ’im, but she thort she did, and that’s where I come in a-asking for a kiss!

“‘Oom Jan,’ she yells to the back of the shop. ‘Come ’ere and throw out this drunken sailor-man.’

“Lucky for me ’er uncle didn’t ’ear ’er, so I leans across the counter and I says very serious, ‘Juffrouw, I love you. Tell me, wot’s the tears about?’”...

“I tell you, sir,” he interrupted his story to observe, “in dealing with women tell ’em the truth first pop. If you love ’em, tell ’em so. Lies is all right in dealing man to man, but with the wimmen, tell ’em the truth.

“So it wasn’t long till we was fair intimate. I ’ung ’round ’er shop for three days, I did, and then I thort as ’ow I might take a few liberties with ’er.

“‘No,’ she says, ‘nothing of that, George. I want to make you a good wife,’ she says.

“‘Wife,’ I says to myself. I was sitting in the potaties all right-o, with a quid a month and no ‘ome ner nothing. Wife! Wot ’ave I let myself in for?’ But she was that simple ’earted I couldn’t say no to ’er and I loved her fair to distraction.

“I went back to my ship, but I couldn’t stand it, so at last I gave it up and went to her and we was married in a church and set up ’ousekeeping in a barge!”

A sharp voice from the cabin cut short our colloquy. The skipper jumped as if shot. “Coming, coming,” he called in a very respectful voice, “coming, my dear!”

“It’s——” I left the useless question unfinished. I knew it was the Queen of Sheba, the heroine of the sweets-shop in Flushing, the Mrs. Noah of the barge.

“Yes, it’s my wife. A strong bellus she has, sir: good lungs; and the little shavers has ’em, too.” He pointed to the babies on the deck. “Sea-faring men needs good lungs, you know, sir. But my lads don’t seem to take much to salt water, sir. They prefers canals. They gets sick on the Hollandsch Diep. Can’t make sailor-men o’ them, sir.”

“Sailor-men!” I retorted. “What about that cruiser’s forecastle talk you were giving me, and marrying and settling down? Were you joking with me, skipper? Isn’t love in a barge all it’s cracked up to be?”

“No, sir; yes, sir,” he said, answering both my questions at once but pulling a very sober face. “A man what is a man owes it to hisself to marry and settle down. But a lad, now! that’s another question, sir. I tell you, sir, confidential-like, I’m going to name the next lad after Sir David Beatty!”

“Whew!” I whistled. “And if the lad is a girl?”

“I’ll name her ‘Rule Brittania,’ sir—if my wife agrees.... Coming, coming, my dear; coming,” he called. “Good day, sir; thank you, sir.”