II And the Polite Cannon of Weiss Nicht
Now it happened that, by reason of the admiral’s recent insomnia, he did wake first—having slept but four hundred years and some odd months and weeks and days. And as he woke (the next morning, as he supposed) he swore with ecstasy—so fine did he feel.
“Wake up, you lazy lunkers!” he cried gayly to his men, making a prodigious yawn himself. “I feel like a fighting cock—” or words to that effect. I am not a nautical person. At all events he went on addressing them: “Unless all signs fail, something will happen this good day. By my bay mare’s currycomb, I pity the craft that the Tonans falls in with to-day. For, having drunken, we now need to eat, and there is not a rat aboard the Tonans that might serve us for food. Up with you!”
A few of the men who, like Ruhet, did not sleep well, struggled to wakefulness at his voice. But, as to the most of them, it required his heavy boot, and his nearly as heavy hand, to kick and cuff them to their senses. However, at last, all were awake, and so good had been the admiral’s rest that his temper still kept. And this was saying much for Ruhet.
Weiss Nicht, the second officer, came for orders, scarcely able to conceal his yawn, for he was one of the crew who was never troubled with insomnia, notwithstanding the fact that Ruhet had made it fashionable.
“Up anchor and away, Weiss Nicht. Some ship must furnish us meat to-day, and we will give them water in exchange.”
Each took a final drink from the spring, which now flowed full and free once more, and then went to their stations with as good a will as Ruhet himself. And it required this to get the sleepy ship under way.
For, having once drunk of the Spring of The Thousand Years, one is immune; its waters have no more power to cause sleep, but, on the contrary, produce such a delightful state of exhilaration as to approach mild intoxication. It was in this blissful state that they finally set sail.
Now, they were scarce an hour under way when this Weiss Nicht, who was the gunner’s mate on board, and many other things at other times and places, sighted, hull down, on the port quarter a small, strange craft painted green and scarcely to be distinguished from the water itself.
This he reported, as was his duty, to his superior, Nicht Wahr.
“Hah!” cried the proud and apparently learned Nicht Wahr, “it is a rowing barge upon which some one has built a small cabin to float about in. It is good for the sun and the rain—is a cabin like that.”
“And the night dews are bad,” agreed the gibing Weiss Nicht.
“Go on,” commanded Nicht Wahr, who hated the servile but critical second officer and gunner’s mate aboard. “They have no food. They can be of no use to us. To your station, Nicht!”
“But it moves, you fools!” thundered Ruhet, who had come on deck in time to hear the contention. “And it has neither sails like the Egyptian craft nor oars like the Roman. I wish I had it!”
“If your excellency will pardon Nicht Wahr,” said the apparently learned one, with a great bow, “he begs leave to doubt that it moves—much.”
“Hang you! Haven’t I got a couple of eyes?”
Now Nicht Wahr only bowed, but as he did so he turned and smiled pityingly to Weiss Nicht, as who should say: “Let him have his way. But, oh! Moves! Like this ship, for instance!”
And perhaps that is the reason he only answered (when Ruhet had said imperiously), “Well, then?”
“Excellency, perhaps they have in the hold little wheels turned by the rowers. There was talk of such a thing in Byzantium last year. Perhaps a knot a day.”
Now there had been no such talk at Byzantium. It was the reductio ad absurdum of the haughty and apparently learned Wahr. He winked at Nicht.
But Ruhet insisted all the more because of that saying of Wahr’s: “Ha-a! Is that so? It must be a pretty kind of toy, then. I want it.”
“So you shall,” said the second officer. “For does not the great admiral get everything he wants?”
“I have had no breakfast!”
“But you shall! Ay, before the day is done!” supplemented Wahr.
“Well, stop talking like a dictionary and get the toy for me. Then we’ll chase for food. Grace before meat, you know, aha, aha, ha!”
Nicht Wahr cast upon the unhappy Weiss Nicht a look of superior hatred; that he had by his impertinence rushed in where he had feared to tread, and had brought forth that bitter humor of Hier Ruhet’s.
“I desire, sir, that hereafter you will remain at your station to await my orders, or those of his excellency,” he said, “I will get the toy for him.”
“Oh, Wahr, tut, tut!” laughed the admiral, in high glee, because of the success of his humor. “Oh, Nicht, tut, tut! You must live as brothers aboard.”
“Sir,” said the haughty next in command, “the discipline must be maintained!”
“Well, since I think of it, that is so,” admitted Hier Ruhet. “Get along, Nicht!”
Whereupon Nicht Wahr haughtily commanded Weiss Nicht in addition, that a gun be fired as politely as possible across the bows of the little craft, by the way of invitation for her to heave to—since the admiral desired her—
“In case she should be moving,” he said, with a great bow to the admiral.
“Politely, hah?” cried Ruhet. “I think that is a mistake. It is always better to skeer ’em. Hang politeness in a cannon!”
“It is not for that purpose, sir,” answered that wise mate, “that I do it—to be polite. But in order that we commit no act of piracy on the high seas.”
Then Wahr struck an attitude in which his back was very concave and his feet far apart. For he was a sea lawyer, he said.