“First rate.  Ask any one.  Quite worth having—­only impossible,” I declared.

“He shall have his chance to reform in the brig,” said Jasper, with a laugh.  “There will be no temptations either to drink or steal where I am going to this time.”

I didn’t press him for anything more definite on that point.  In fact, intimate as we were, I had a pretty clear notion of the general run of his business.

But as we are going ashore in his gig he asked suddenly:  “By the way, do you know where Heemskirk is?”

I eyed him covertly, and was reassured.  He had asked the question, not as a lover, but as a trader.  I told him that I had heard in Palembang that the Neptun was on duty down about Flores and Sumbawa.  Quite out of his way.  He expressed his satisfaction.

“You know,” he went on, “that fellow, when he gets on the Borneo coast, amuses himself by knocking down my beacons.  I have had to put up a few to help me in and out of the rivers.  Early this year a Celebes trader becalmed in a prau was watching him at it.  He steamed the gunboat full tilt at two of them, one after another, smashing them to pieces, and then lowered a boat on purpose to pull out a third, which I had a lot of trouble six months ago to stick up in the middle of a mudflat for a tide mark.  Did you ever hear of anything more provoking—­eh?”

“I wouldn’t quarrel with the beggar,” I observed casually, yet disliking that piece of news strongly.  “It isn’t worth while.”

“I quarrel?” cried Jasper.  “I don’t want to quarrel.  I don’t want to hurt a single hair of his ugly head.  My dear fellow, when I think of Freya’s twenty-first birthday, all the world’s my friend, Heemskirk included.  It’s a nasty, spiteful amusement, all the same.”

We parted rather hurriedly on the quay, each of us having his own pressing business to attend to.  I would have been very much cut up had I known that this hurried grasp of the hand with “So long, old boy.  Good luck to you!” was the last of our partings.

On his return to the Straits I was away, and he was gone again before I got back.  He was trying to achieve three trips before Freya’s twenty-first birthday.  At Nelson’s Cove I missed him again by only a couple of days.  Freya and I talked of “that lunatic” and “perfect idiot” with great delight and infinite appreciation.  She was very radiant, with a more pronounced gaiety, notwithstanding that she had just parted from Jasper.  But this was to be their last separation.

“Do get aboard as soon as you can, Miss Freya,” I entreated.

She looked me straight in the face, her colour a little heightened and with a sort of solemn ardour—­if there was a little catch in her voice.

“The very next day.”

Ah, yes!  The very next day after her twenty-first birthday.  I was pleased at this hint of deep feeling.  It was as if she had grown impatient at last of the self-imposed delay.  I supposed that Jasper’s recent visit had told heavily.