"He is, blight him!" said Captain Image with emphasis. "I called in there two or three times after I'd got some of those please-buck-up letters from O'Neill and Craven, that I didn't care about, and the cauliflower-headed old humbug clean took me in. He was Mr. Crewdson, to be sure; no, he was not Mr. K. O'Neill; no, I couldn't see Mr. K. just then; no, he couldn't make an appointment for me with the gentleman; anything I wanted he would attend to personally. If I re-read the letters he was sure I should find that they were not unreasonable, but, on the other hand, would put me in the way of earning extra commission on cargo for myself. So it ended in my being civil to him, and he was really nothing more than a clerk. You can just picture to yourself, Purser, what I felt when I found out that I'd been civil to a clerk by mistake."
"It was pretty hard lines, sir."
"Of course a West African merchant's business is a rum contract for a young girl to catch hold of, and I don't say Miss Kate was wrong in keeping in the background to start with. In fact I'll own up straight that she was right, and the proof's plain in the way that firm's come back to life. Why, Purser, I'll bet you a bottle of Eno that O'Neill and Craven are doing just double the turn-over now they did twelve months ago."
"You'll know best about that, sir," said Mr. Balgarnie with a sigh, as he remembered that only Captain Image touched commission on the cargo which the M'poso collected on the Coast. "But I will own up that she has got the knack of making all the smarter men in the firm both on the Coast and at Liverpool keen on her when they thought she was a man. Of course it was a bit unlikely that the old-timer palm-oil ruffians like Swizzle-Stick Smith and Owe-it-Slade would take to new ways that meant more work, all at once, though for that matter I'll bet Slade put off making up his mind for so long as to whether he liked hustling or he didn't, that finally he dropped into the new ways without knowing it."
"Slade's gone off up-country to find the firm a rubber property, Purser, me lad. Laura told me about it last night. She hasn't heard of him once since he pulled out of Smooth River, and she's very anxious about him. I hope none of those up-country bushmen have chopped Slade. I should be sorry to lose that man. He owes me a matter of three sovereigns, and that old Holland gun of mine that he borrowed for half an hour eighteen months ago has gone up-country with him. I believe he's in the ribs of the fo'c'sle shop, too, for the thick end of a fiver."
"Four-seventeen-nine. I've given both Chips and the bo's'n a rare dressing down about it. They've no business to let anyone with Slade's reputation have as much tick as that. The bo's'n's new to the Coast—our bo's'ns always do seem to die, sir—but old Chips ought to know that's no way to run a fo'c'sle shop. They can chuck away their own money as they choose, but I told them both plainly that I can't afford to drop my share in a sum like that."
"Nor can I," said the other sleeping partner. "You can let both Chips and the bo's'n understand that unless I see a good round sum in hard cash as my share of profits when we get back to Liverpool, they don't ride in the old M'poso next trip. They can put their book debts where the monkey put the nuts. They don't pay me out with those. No, by Crumbs!"
"Miss Kate, by the way, was mighty anxious to know what profits there were in fo'c'sle shops. Of course I said I'd heard of them on other boats, but we'd never allow such a thing on the M'poso."
"Um," said Captain Image thoughtfully, "that tale's all right for most passengers, but I don't think I'd have risked it with Miss Kate. She strikes me as being a young woman who likes to hear one's opinion on things, but generally has her own information on the matter already cut and packed beforehand. I told her last night how sorry I was to see all that cargo waiting at the factory with no Krooboys to work it out of their creek to the steamboat. By Crumbs! Balgarnie, me lad, she'd nipped off back to the M'poso here, and had hired our own blessed deck passenger boys for the job before you could say 'gin.' You know what an independent lot they are, going home with money in their pockets. I bet you a box of oranges you couldn't name me two white men on the Coast who could have persuaded them. But she did it, one-time, and only paid regular wages, too. Dressed for dinner in the evening when she'd finished, just as if she was merely a tripper going home from the Islands, and hadn't an object in life outside trying to tickle the boys with her looks. I tell you, Miss Kate's a very remarkable young woman, Balgarnie, me lad, and if she doesn't peg out here on the Coast, or go broke over floating a rubber swindle, or get married and chuck it, I shall feather my nest very nicely over the cargo she gets shipped."
"I say, Captain, what's between her and Laura? They seem to know one another pretty intimately."