“Then let us trade,” I said, turning my shoulder to him.  “I see you are bent on it.”

I did not want an open scandal, but I thought that outward decency may be bought too dearly at times.  I included Jacobus, myself, the whole population of the island, in the same contemptuous disgust as though we had been partners in an ignoble transaction.  And the remembered vision at sea, diaphanous and blue, of the Pearl of the Ocean at sixty miles off; the unsubstantial, clear marvel of it as if evoked by the art of a beautiful and pure magic, turned into a thing of horrors too.  Was this the fortune this vaporous and rare apparition had held for me in its hard heart, hidden within the shape as of fair dreams and mist?  Was this my luck?

“I think”—­Jacobus became suddenly audible after what seemed the silence of vile meditation—­“that you might conveniently take some thirty tons.  That would be about the lot, Captain.”

“Would it?  The lot!  I dare say it would be convenient, but I haven’t got enough money for that.”

I had never seen him so animated.

“No!” he exclaimed with what I took for the accent of grim menace.  “That’s a pity.”  He paused, then, unrelenting:  “How much money have you got, Captain?” he inquired with awful directness.

It was my turn to face him squarely.  I did so and mentioned the amount I could dispose of.  And I perceived that he was disappointed.  He thought it over, his calculating gaze lost in mine, for quite a long time before he came out in a thoughtful tone with the rapacious suggestion: 

“You could draw some more from your charterers.  That would be quite easy, Captain.”

“No, I couldn’t,” I retorted brusquely.  “I’ve drawn my salary up to date, and besides, the ship’s accounts are closed.”

I was growing furious.  I pursued:  “And I’ll tell you what:  if I could do it I wouldn’t.”  Then throwing off all restraint, I added:  “You are a bit too much of a Jacobus, Mr. Jacobus.”

The tone alone was insulting enough, but he remained tranquil, only a little puzzled, till something seemed to dawn upon him; but the unwonted light in his eyes died out instantly.  As a Jacobus on his native heath, what a mere skipper chose to say could not touch him, outcast as he was.  As a ship-chandler he could stand anything.  All I caught of his mumble was a vague—­“quite correct,” than which nothing could have been more egregiously false at bottom—­to my view, at least.  But I remembered—­I had never forgotten—­that I must see the girl.  I did not mean to go.  I meant to stay in the house till I had seen her once more.

“Look here!” I said finally.  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  I’ll take as many of your confounded potatoes as my money will buy, on condition that you go off at once down to the wharf to see them loaded in the lighter and sent alongside the ship straight away.  Take the invoice and a signed receipt with you.  Here’s the key of my desk.  Give it to Burns.  He will pay you.