I thought suddenly (and with profound disgust) of the other Jacobus, and I could not refrain from saying slily: 

“I suppose if he employed her, say, as a scullion in his household and occasionally pulled her hair or boxed her ears, the position would have been more regular—­less shocking to the respectable class to which he belongs.”

He was not so stupid as to miss my intention, and shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“You don’t understand.  To begin with, she’s not a mulatto.  And a scandal is a scandal.  People should be given a chance to forget.  I dare say it would have been better for her if she had been turned into a scullion or something of that kind.  Of course he’s trying to make money in every sort of petty way, but in such a business there’ll never be enough for anybody to come forward.”

When my friend left me I had a conception of Jacobus and his daughter existing, a lonely pair of castaways, on a desert island; the girl sheltering in the house as if it were a cavern in a cliff, and Jacobus going out to pick up a living for both on the beach—­ exactly like two shipwrecked people who always hope for some rescuer to bring them back at last into touch with the rest of mankind.

But Jacobus’s bodily reality did not fit in with this romantic view.  When he turned up on board in the usual course, he sipped the cup of coffee placidly, asked me if I was satisfied—­and I hardly listened to the harbour gossip he dropped slowly in his low, voice-saving enunciation.  I had then troubles of my own.  My ship chartered, my thoughts dwelling on the success of a quick round voyage, I had been suddenly confronted by a shortage of bags.  A catastrophe!  The stock of one especial kind, called pockets, seemed to be totally exhausted.  A consignment was shortly expected—­it was afloat, on its way, but, meantime, the loading of my ship dead stopped, I had enough to worry about.  My consignees, who had received me with such heartiness on my arrival, now, in the character of my charterers, listened to my complaints with polite helplessness.  Their manager, the old-maidish, thin man, who so prudishly didn’t even like to speak about the impure Jacobus, gave me the correct commercial view of the position.

“My dear Captain”—­he was retracting his leathery cheeks into a condescending, shark-like smile—­“we were not morally obliged to tell you of a possible shortage before you signed the charter-party.  It was for you to guard against the contingency of a delay--strictly speaking.  But of course we shouldn’t have taken any advantage.  This is no one’s fault really.  We ourselves have been taken unawares,” he concluded primly, with an obvious lie.

This lecture I confess had made me thirsty.  Suppressed rage generally produces that effect; and as I strolled on aimlessly I bethought myself of the tall earthenware pitcher in the captains’ room of the Jacobus “store.”