I enjoyed Jasper’s incredulous surprise.

“The devil he will!” he cried.  “What on earth for?  Aren’t you trying to pull my leg, old boy?”

“No.  I’m not.  You must understand Schultz’s psychology.  He’s neither a loafer nor a cadger.  He’s not likely to wander about looking for somebody to stand him drinks.  But suppose he goes on shore with five dollars, or fifty for that matter, in his pocket?  After the third or fourth glass he becomes fuddled and charitable.  He either drops his money all over the place, or else distributes the lot around; gives it to any one who will take it.  Then it occurs to him that the night is young yet, and that he may require a good many more drinks for himself and his friends before morning.  So he starts off cheerfully for his ship.  His legs never get affected nor his head either in the usual way.  He gets aboard and simply grabs the first thing that seems to him suitable—­the cabin lamp, a coil of rope, a bag of biscuits, a drum of oil—­and converts it into money without thinking twice about it.  This is the process and no other.  You have only to look out that he doesn’t get a start.  That’s all.”

“Confound his psychology,” muttered Jasper.  “But a man with a voice like his is fit to talk to the angels.  Is he incurable do you think?”

I said that I thought so.  Nobody had prosecuted him yet, but no one would employ him any longer.  His end would be, I feared, to starve in some hole or other.

“Ah, well,” reflected Jasper.  “The Bonito isn’t trading to any ports of civilisation.  That’ll make it easier for him to keep straight.”

That was true.  The brig’s business was on uncivilised coasts, with obscure rajahs dwelling in nearly unknown bays; with native settlements up mysterious rivers opening their sombre, forest-lined estuaries among a welter of pale green reefs and dazzling sand-banks, in lonely straits of calm blue water all aglitter with sunshine.  Alone, far from the beaten tracks, she glided, all white, round dark, frowning headlands, stole out, silent like a ghost, from behind points of land stretching out all black in the moonlight; or lay hove-to, like a sleeping sea-bird, under the shadow of some nameless mountain waiting for a signal.  She would be glimpsed suddenly on misty, squally days dashing disdainfully aside the short aggressive waves of the Java Sea; or be seen far, far away, a tiny dazzling white speck flying across the brooding purple masses of thunderclouds piled up on the horizon.  Sometimes, on the rare mail tracks, where civilisation brushes against wild mystery, when the naive passengers crowding along the rail exclaimed, pointing at her with interest:  “Oh, here’s a yacht!” the Dutch captain, with a hostile glance, would grunt contemptuously:  “Yacht!  No!  That’s only English Jasper.  A pedlar—­”

“A good seaman you say,” ejaculated Jasper, still in the matter of the hopeless Schultz with the wonderfully touching voice.