d to protest earnestly. Mr. Van Wyk was very angry. He had
a good mind to ask that German firm--those people in Malacca--what was
their name?--boats with green funnels. They would be only too glad
of the opening to put one of their small steamers on the run. Yes;
Schnitzler, Jacob Schnitzler, would in a moment. Yes. He had decided to
write without delay.

In his agitation Massy caught up his falling pipe.

"You don't mean it, sir!" he shrieked.

"You shouldn't mismanage your business in this ridiculous manner."

Mr. Van Wyk turned on his heel. The other three whites on the bridge had
not stirred during the scene. Massy walked hastily from side to side,
puffed out his cheeks, suffocated.

"Stuck up Dutchman!"

And he moaned out feverishly a long tale of griefs. The efforts he had
made for all these years to please that man. This was the return you
got for it, eh? Pretty. Write to Schnitzler--let in the green-funnel
boats--get an old Hamburg Jew to ruin him. No, really he could laugh.
. . . He laughed sobbingly. . . . Ha! ha! ha! And make him carry the
letter in his own ship presumably.

He stumbled across a grating and swore. He would not hesitate to fling
the Dutchman's correspondence overboard--the whole confounded bundle.
He had never, never made any charge for that accommodation. But Captain
Whalley, his new partner, would not let him probably; besides, it would
be only putting off the evil day. For his own part he would make a hole
in the water rather than look on tamely at the green funnels overrunning
his trade.

He raved aloud. The China boys hung back with the dishes at the foot of
the ladder. He yelled from the bridge down at the deck, "Aren't we going
to have any chow this evening at all?" then turned violently to Captain
Whalley, who waited, grave and patient, at the head of the table,
smoothing his beard in silence now and then with a forbearing gesture.

"You don't seem to care what happens to me. Don't you see that this
affects your interests as much as mine? It's no joking matter."

He took the foot of the table growling between his teeth.

"Unless you have a few thousands put away somewhere. I haven't."

Mr. Van Wyk dined in his thoroughly lit-up bungalow, putting a point of
splendor in the night of his clearing above the dark bank of the river.
Afterwards he sat down to his piano, and in a pause he became aware
of slow footsteps passing on the path along the front. A plank or two
creaked u