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Fortunately for the keeping of peace, he was quite ignorant of the German tongue, and when Herr Schwankmacher proceeded to shake his pipe at him, and deliver his opinion of trespassers in general and French trespassers in particular, with intermittent allusions to cabbages, Rodier only listened with the same gentle smile and deprecating movements of his grimy hands.
It chanced that Rodier was the first to step out of the machine. As the burly, bearded, white-clad figure of Herr Schwankmacher cantered heavily toward him, he lifted his cap, and with that sunny smile which had accompanied him through life, he said "Monsieur, je vous fais mille excuses. Voudriez-vou bien me dire ou l'on puisse obtenir de la pétrole." "Sapperment!" cried the infuriated German.
Herr Schwankmacher, now transformed into a cordial host, invited him to drink a bottle of lager with him at one of the bars, but he excused himself and followed Schwab into a large store where every sort of requisite for machines was kept in stock.
Herr Schwankmacher, stepping back, fell into the arms of a grinning stoker, and a little native boy, shrieking with fright, ran head-first into the corpulent frame of a merchant who was more stable in his copra business than in his legs.
Hither Herr Schwankmacher was wont to retire for a brief spell of rest and meditation in the heat of the day, and on this occasion he had been accompanied by a compatriot newly arrived from Germany, to whom he was expatiating on the pleasures of colonial life in general, and in particular on the delights of rearing cabbages in so rich and prolific a soil.
"There's no other way, is there?" "Sree sousand miles?" "Rather less, isn't it?" "Ach! zis knocks me into a vat you call it? into a billycock." He turned to Herr Schwankmacher, who had just refilled his pipe, and repeated to him the astounding announcement. The German scoffed.
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