We parted on the quay, after he had expressed quietly the hope of seeing me often “at the store.”  He had a smoking-room for captains there, with newspapers and a box of “rather decent cigars.”  I left him very unceremoniously.

My consignees received me with the usual business heartiness, but their account of the state of the freight-market was by no means so favourable as the talk of the wrong Jacobus had led me to expect.  Naturally I became inclined now to put my trust in his version, rather.  As I closed the door of the private office behind me I thought to myself:  “H’m.  A lot of lies.  Commercial diplomacy.  That’s the sort of thing a man coming from sea has got to expect.  They would try to charter the ship under the market rate.”

In the big, outer room, full of desks, the chief clerk, a tall, lean, shaved person in immaculate white clothes and with a shiny, closely-cropped black head on which silvery gleams came and went, rose from his place and detained me affably.  Anything they could do for me, they would be most happy.  Was I likely to call again in the afternoon?  What?  Going to a funeral?  Oh, yes, poor Captain H-.

He pulled a long, sympathetic face for a moment, then, dismissing from this workaday world the baby, which had got ill in a tempest and had died from too much calm at sea, he asked me with a dental, shark-like smile—­if sharks had false teeth—­whether I had yet made my little arrangements for the ship’s stay in port.

“Yes, with Jacobus,” I answered carelessly.  “I understand he’s the brother of Mr. Ernest Jacobus to whom I have an introduction from my owners.”

I was not sorry to let him know I was not altogether helpless in the hands of his firm.  He screwed his thin lips dubiously.

“Why,” I cried, “isn’t he the brother?”

“Oh, yes. . . .  They haven’t spoken to each other for eighteen years,” he added impressively after a pause.

“Indeed!  What’s the quarrel about?”

“Oh, nothing!  Nothing that one would care to mention,” he protested primly.  “He’s got quite a large business.  The best ship-chandler here, without a doubt.  Business is all very well, but there is such a thing as personal character, too, isn’t there?  Good-morning, Captain.”

He went away mincingly to his desk.  He amused me.  He resembled an old maid, a commercial old maid, shocked by some impropriety.  Was it a commercial impropriety?  Commercial impropriety is a serious matter, for it aims at one’s pocket.  Or was he only a purist in conduct who disapproved of Jacobus doing his own touting?  It was certainly undignified.  I wondered how the merchant brother liked it.  But then different countries, different customs.  In a community so isolated and so exclusively “trading” social standards have their own scale.

CHAPTER II