Massy tried to protest earnestly.  Mr. Van Wyk was very angry.  He had a good mind to ask that German firm—­those people in Malacca—­what was their name?—­boats with green funnels.  They would be only too glad of the opening to put one of their small steamers on the run.  Yes; Schnitzler, Jacob Schnitzler, would in a moment.  Yes.  He had decided to write without delay.

In his agitation Massy caught up his falling pipe.

“You don’t mean it, sir!” he shrieked.

“You shouldn’t mismanage your business in this ridiculous manner.”

Mr. Van Wyk turned on his heel.  The other three whites on the bridge had not stirred during the scene.  Massy walked hastily from side to side, puffed out his cheeks, suffocated.

“Stuck up Dutchman!”

And he moaned out feverishly a long tale of griefs.  The efforts he had made for all these years to please that man.  This was the return you got for it, eh?  Pretty.  Write to Schnitzler—­let in the green-funnel boats—­get an old Hamburg Jew to ruin him.  No, really he could laugh. . . .  He laughed sobbingly. . . .  Ha! ha! ha!  And make him carry the letter in his own ship presumably.

He stumbled across a grating and swore.  He would not hesitate to fling the Dutchman’s correspondence overboard—­the whole confounded bundle.  He had never, never made any charge for that accommodation.  But Captain Whalley, his new partner, would not let him probably; besides, it would be only putting off the evil day.  For his own part he would make a hole in the water rather than look on tamely at the green funnels overrunning his trade.

He raved aloud.  The China boys hung back with the dishes at the foot of the ladder.  He yelled from the bridge down at the deck, “Aren’t we going to have any chow this evening at all?” then turned violently to Captain Whalley, who waited, grave and patient, at the head of the table, smoothing his beard in silence now and then with a forbearing gesture.

“You don’t seem to care what happens to me.  Don’t you see that this affects your interests as much as mine?  It’s no joking matter.”

He took the foot of the table growling between his teeth.

“Unless you have a few thousands put away somewhere.  I haven’t.”

Mr. Van Wyk dined in his thoroughly lit-up bungalow, putting a point of splendor in the night of his clearing above the dark bank of the river.  Afterwards he sat down to his piano, and in a pause he became aware of slow footsteps passing on the path along the front.  A plank or two creaked under a heavy tread; he swung half round on the music-stool, listening with his fingertips at rest on the keyboard.  His little terrier barked violently, backing in from the veranda.  A deep voice apologized gravely for “this intrusion.”  He walked out quickly.

At the head of the steps the patriarchal figure, who was the new captain of the Sofala apparently (he had seen a round dozen of them, but not one of that sort), towered without advancing.  The little dog barked unceasingly, till a flick of Mr. Van Wyk’s handkerchief made him spring aside into silence.  Captain Whalley, opening the matter, was met by a punctiliously polite but determined opposition.