Читать книгу All in a Life-time онлайн

30 страница из 133

“Run and get a pistol!” he whispered to me.

I obeyed. As I returned and slipped him the weapon, the mutineers were just coming to a pause before him.

The Captain levelled his pistol. He made short work of the difficulty. He offered them cold lead or hot grog. The crew, like sensible men, chose the latter, but they continued to grumble at the food—which was mostly hard-tack and cornmeal—until, on a day when we were becalmed in the North Sea, we caught several dolphins weighing over 150 pounds. I have rarely eaten anything better than that dolphin steak.

This is not to be a record of travel, but one phase of that early journey of mine is well worthy of notice: I saw Germany just as she was entering on the imperialistic career that ended so abruptly when her crestfallen representatives signed the Treaty of Versailles. The Franco-Prussian War had just ended in triumph; the German Empire had been reborn. Its people were not the easygoing people that I remembered from my earlier boyhood in Mannheim. Everywhere there were the beginnings of commercial and military activity; everywhere there was preached the doctrine of world power.