And possibly the raftsmen's dialect was what is called PLATT-DEUTSCH, and so they found his English more familiar to their ears than another man's German.

Quite indifferent students of German can read Fritz Reuter's charming platt-Deutch tales with some little facility because many of the words are English.

I suppose this is the tongue which our Saxon ancestors carried to England with them.

By and by I will inquire of some other philologist.
However, in the mean time it had transpired that the men employed to calk the raft had found that the leak was not a leak at all, but only a crack between the logs--a crack that belonged there, and was not dangerous, but had been magnified into a leak by the disordered imagination of the mate.

Therefore we went aboard again with a good degree of confidence, and presently got to sea without accident.