We waited two days and should have been rather bored, in spite of the bright nights, the midnight sun, the calm waters, and all those things which land-lubbers tell about who have only made one voyage in their lives and have never experienced dirty weather, except that this fellow Fourgues can’t drop anchor anywhere without running up against an old acquaintance. At Trondhjem it was an American with whom he had knocked around once upon a time on the coast of Chili and who, since the war, was plying between the United States, Norway, and Russia. They recognized one another through their field-glasses and the American--Flamigan or Flannigan--came over in his cutter. The two old cronies fell on each other’s necks--it was ten or twelve years since they had met--and all the time we stayed in the fjord, Fourgues, Flannigan and I were as thick as thieves. There was also Flannigan’s mate, who smoked his pipe, drank his whiskey, and said nothing. If you ever meet Flannigan, go right at him without mincing things. He would talk a dog’s hind leg off and is not afraid of saying what he thinks. Fourgues asked him at once if he had been to Germany, but he swore by all the gods that he hadn’t, though he carries merchandise wherever his Company orders him without feeling obliged to ask to whom it goes. He claimed that he had not been beyond Holland or Denmark, but that’s not quite certain. He might have said it so as not to hurt us, for he loves France, England a little less--having an Irish father--but above all is an American, and told us a lot of things which people in France might take to heart. It was amusing, all the same, to hear someone on affairs in the North, after having listened to Plantat--I believe I told you of him--on those of the East, with an interval of only four months. In this way one gets ideas about the side-shows of the war and what is being thought here, there and elsewhere. You won’t mind if I tell you what I hear in one place and another, will you? You aren’t obliged to believe any of it, although I write nothing but what I see or hear. And then, you know, fellows such as Plantat and Flannigan are like uncensored newspapers, so there is more chance of their speaking the truth.