"Wouldn't you rouse out in a hurry if you only saw a Christian steamboat once in three months at the oftenest? I told the second mate to make fast the whistle string to the bridge rail when he judged he was five miles off the old sinner's beach, and I guess Swizzle-Stick Smith jumped slap through his mosquito bar at the first toot. See those pyjamas he's wearing? He bought them at the forecastle shop aboard here just six months ago."
"Blue, with a pink stripe, so they are. This is a rare good glass of yours, sir. Yes, I remember Chips telling me. Three pairs he got at nine bob a pair. Wouldn't pay a sixpence more. And tried to get a bottle of Eno thrown in as a make-weight. Phew! but this day's going to be a ringtailed scorcher. Look at the mist clearing away from those hills at the back already."
Captain Image stuffed a pipe and lit it. "It's a murdering bad beach to-day," he repeated. "Always is when there's a few tons of cargo waiting for me to get commission on."
The purser touched no cargo commission, and so had but small sympathy for cargo gathering. "I see old Swizzle-Stick's making his boys run down the oil casks into the surf. They'll never swim them through. Rather a pity, isn't it, sir, to stay on here and let them try? They're bound to get half of them stove at the very least."
"That's his palaver. I missed calling here last round. There was a swell like a cliff that day; but then there always is a bad beach along this run of the Coast; and so he should have double lot of cargo ready for me. There'll be oil and there'll be rubber, and I shouldn't wonder but what he's a few bags of kernels as well. I bet that factory on the beach there is just bulging with cargo. It ought to tally up to quite fifty tons, and I'm not going to have some other captain snapping up old Swizzle-Stick Smith's trade if I know it. Balgarnie, my lad, I'd the straight tip given me from O'Neill and Craven's in Liverpool when I was home. If we don't make it handy to call at their factories along this Coast, the Hamburg boats will. They've shipped a new director or something at O'Neill and Craven's—K. O'Neill he signs himself—and that man intends to make things hum."
"My Whiskers!" said the Purser. "I clean forgot. We've a new clerk for O'Neill and Craven's here at Malla-Nulla. It's that red-haired young chap, Carter, in the second class."
"Last three red-haired passengers I knew all pegged out within three months of being put ashore. Color of the hair seems to counteract the effects of drugs. Purser, I'll bet you just two cocktails Carter's planted before we're here again next trip."
"It's on," said Mr. Balgarnie, "and I shall remember it. The young chap's made me a picture frame for my room as good as you could buy in a shop, and he's built the Doc some barbed arrows just like those Kasai ones the old chief brought along from the Congo when he was on the Antwerp run. He's a handy young fellow."
"That doesn't get over the red hair, Purser. You'll lose that cocktail. Bet you another cocktail, if you like, he gets spilt in the surf getting ashore."
Mr. Balgarnie winked pleasantly. "Then we'll consider that last one lost already." He put his head inside the chart-house and called out the captain's Krooboy steward—"Brass-Pan?"