I guessed him to be a steamer-captain.  It was impossible to get to know these men.  They came and went too quickly and their ships lay moored far out, at the very entrance of the harbour.  Theirs was another life altogether.  He yawned slightly.

“Dull hole, isn’t it?”

I understood this to allude to the town.

“Do you find it so?” I murmured.

“Don’t you?  But I’m off to-morrow, thank goodness.”

He was a very gentlemanly person, good-natured and superior.  I watched him draw the open box of cigars to his side of the table, take a big cigar-case out of his pocket and begin to fill it very methodically.  Presently, on our eyes meeting, he winked like a common mortal and invited me to follow his example.  “They are really decent smokes.”  I shook my head.

“I am not off to-morrow.”

“What of that?  Think I am abusing old Jacobus’s hospitality?  Heavens!  It goes into the bill, of course.  He spreads such little matters all over his account.  He can take care of himself!  Why, it’s business—­”

I noted a shadow fall over his well-satisfied expression, a momentary hesitation in closing his cigar-case.  But he ended by putting it in his pocket jauntily.  A placid voice uttered in the doorway:  “That’s quite correct, Captain.”

The large noiseless Jacobus advanced into the room.  His quietness, in the circumstances, amounted to cordiality.  He had put on his jacket before joining us, and he sat down in the chair vacated by the steamer-man, who nodded again to me and went out with a short, jarring laugh.  A profound silence reigned.  With his drowsy stare Jacobus seemed to be slumbering open-eyed.  Yet, somehow, I was aware of being profoundly scrutinised by those heavy eyes.  In the enormous cavern of the store somebody began to nail down a case, expertly:  tap-tap . . . tap-tap-tap.

Two other experts, one slow and nasal, the other shrill and snappy, started checking an invoice.

“A half-coil of three-inch manilla rope.”

“Right!”

“Six assorted shackles.”

“Right!”

“Six tins assorted soups, three of pate, two asparagus, fourteen pounds tobacco, cabin.”

“Right!”

“It’s for the captain who was here just now,” breathed out the immovable Jacobus.  “These steamer orders are very small.  They pick up what they want as they go along.  That man will be in Samarang in less than a fortnight.  Very small orders indeed.”

The calling over of the items went on in the shop; an extraordinary jumble of varied articles, paint-brushes, Yorkshire Relish, etc., etc. . . .  “Three sacks of best potatoes,” read out the nasal voice.

At this Jacobus blinked like a sleeping man roused by a shake, and displayed some animation.  At his order, shouted into the shop, a smirking half-caste clerk with his ringlets much oiled and with a pen stuck behind his ear, brought in a sample of six potatoes which he paraded in a row on the table.