The next day we were mustered out. Then we found a good hotel where nearly the whole crew put up. There was very good board. A custom here was to put a bottle of brnady (Genever) on table for every meal. The Danes are accustomed to a snaps, but we drank very little of this liquor. We were thinking of a week of fun and amusement, now, after a whole year of service. The Danes are good entertainers and their amusements are clean and wholesome. There was Tivoli, a place where good music and folkdances were given. Many evenings we were there. A glass of beer or other light drink and a cigar, and we would listen to the music and singing, and watch the dancing. The girls who sang and danced were beauties, indeed; and the comedies that were enacted seemed just the thing to make us forget the woes of this world. During the day we would go about the city and view the sights, the king's palaces, and other palaces and museums and parks.
One evening the men had got hold of the second mate. Then they went to tkae some inspiring drinks. After they had visited one place they went through some dark alleys to another. Here they made a circle about the mate. Now he was to be paid for disturbing their peace unnecessarily, on the homeward voyage. They had promised they would make him pay dearly for exercising them so hard. The mate gave up at once, and said: 'You can kill me if you want to. I can do nothing. You are 14 and I am alone. I am helpless. You will have to do what seems best to you.' I thgout it was cowardly for fourteen men to surround one in a dark alley, and some of the fourteen were drunk and might kill their victim before they realized what was done. Such infamous deed I would not agree to or look at. I agreed that perhaps the mate had gone too far, and called us out at night many times unnecessarily; but we ought to forget about that now, since our voyage was happily completed. And I said to the other men that if they attempted to execute their threat, I would help the mate resist the attack. He took me by the hand and thanked me. When Jakobson saw that, he said he would also help the mate, and the latter thanked him with a ahearty handshake, saying: 'Now we are 3 against the 12; now I am not afraid.' And we were the biggest boys in the group, so we probably could have handled the 12. They then huddled together at a short distance from for a sort of council of war, which ended in their departure from the alley. Then the mate said to Jakobson and myself: 'Now, you come with me. You have saved my life, or, at any rate, saved me from being beaten up. Now nothing shall be too good for you. And now I will tell you what the captain said when you refused to paint the forecastle on your free watch.' He said, 'if it wasn't for Jackobson and Vestbo, he would show the men who was in command of the ship, but those two boys I am not so sure I can handle.' Then the mate took us from one fine place to the other, and we were treated to refreshments and drinks of the best obtainable, and the mate paid for all. In the small hours of the morning we came back to our lodging. I never met the second mate since that night.