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“A very different person,” he remarked dreamily and got up. His movements were particularly noiseless. “Well–thank you, Captain. If anything is not to your liking please mention it to your steward. I suppose you will be giving a dinner to the office- clerks presently.”

“What for?” I cried with some warmth. “If I were a steady trader to the port I could understand it. But a complete stranger! . . . I may not turn up again here for years. I don’t see why! . . . Do you mean to say it is customary?”

“It will be expected from a man like you,” he breathed out placidly. “Eight of the principal clerks, the manager, that’s nine, you three gentlemen, that’s twelve. It needn’t be very expensive. If you tell your steward to give me a day’s notice–“

“It will be expected of me! Why should it be expected of me? Is it because I look particularly soft–or what?

His immobility struck me as dignified suddenly, his imperturbable quality as dangerous. “There’s plenty of time to think about that,” I concluded weakly with a gesture that tried to wave him away. But before he departed he took time to mention regretfully that he had not yet had the pleasure of seeing me at his “store” to sample those cigars. He had a parcel of six thousand to dispose of, very cheap.

“I think it would be worth your while to secure some,” he added with a fat, melancholy smile and left the cabin.

Mr. Burns struck his fist on the table excitedly.

“Did you ever see such impudence! He’s made up his mind to get something out of you one way or another, sir.”

At once feeling inclined to defend Jacobus, I observed philosophically that all this was business, I supposed. But my absurd mate, muttering broken disjointed sentences, such as: “I cannot bear! . . . Mark my words! . . .” and so on, flung out of the cabin. If I hadn’t nursed him through that deadly fever I wouldn’t have suffered such manners for a single day.

CHAPTER III

Jacobus having put me in mind of his wealthy brother I concluded I would pay that business call at once. I had by that time heard a little more of him. He was a member of the Council, where he made himself objectionable to the authorities. He exercised a considerable influence on public opinion. Lots of people owed him money. He was an importer on a great scale of all sorts of goods. For instance, the whole supply of bags for sugar was practically in his hands. This last fact I did not learn till afterwards. The general impression conveyed to me was that of a local personage. He was a bachelor and gave weekly card-parties in his house out of town, which were attended by the best people in the colony.

The greater, then, was my surprise to discover his office in shabby surroundings, quite away from the business quarter, amongst a lot of hovels. Guided by a black board with white lettering, I climbed a narrow wooden staircase and entered a room with a bare floor of planks littered with bits of brown paper and wisps of packing straw. A great number of what looked like wine-cases were piled up against one of the walls. A lanky, inky, light-yellow, mulatto youth, miserably long-necked and generally recalling a sick chicken, got off a three-legged stool behind a cheap deal desk and faced me as if gone dumb with fright. I had some difficulty in persuading him to take in my name, though I could not get from him the nature of his objection. He did it at last with an almost agonised reluctance which ceased to be mysterious to me when I heard him being sworn at menacingly with savage, suppressed growls, then audibly cuffed and finally kicked out without any concealment whatever; because he came back flying head foremost through the door with a stifled shriek.