Pharos, the Egyptian by Guy Boothby — Read

When the sun rose on the following morning, nothing but green seas surrounded us, and the Margrave of Brandenburg was doing her best to live up to the reputation I soon discovered she possessed -- namely, of being the worst roller in the North Sea trade. She was by no means a large craft, nor, as I soon remarked, was she particularly well found; she belonged to a firm of Altona Jews, and, as the captain was wont to say pathetically, "The only thing they did not grudge him was the right to do as much work on the smallest amount of pay on which it was possible for a man to keep body and soul together. " The captain's nationality was more difficult to determine than that of his employers. He called himself an Englishman, but, unfortunately for this assertion, his accent belied him.

In addition to English, he spoke German like a Frenchman, and French like a German, was equally at home in Russian -- which, to say the least of it, is not a language for the amateur -- Italian also, while in a moment of confidence he found occasion to inform me that he had served for three years on board a Spanish troop-ship, an assertion which would lead one to suppose that he was conversant with that language also. In point of fact, he was one of that curious class of sailor commonly met with outside the British mercantile marine, who, if you asked them, would find it difficult to tell you where they were born, and who have been so long at sea that one country has become like another to them, provided the liquor is good and they can scrape together a sufficient living out of it; and one flag is equal to another, provided, of course, it is not Chinese, which as everyone knows is no use to anyone, not even to themselves.