"Shrinkage in trade follows shortage in piece goods, and our piece goods is short. Germany's ain't. I don't say that 'Our Firm' is as bad as most, but there's a cool quarter yard out of the forty for rubbage border and all that. Besides, mind you, some of 'em goes as far as three-quarters!--a cool-three-quarters!!--and why not? If you tike a hinch why not tike a hell!"
This was apparently quite conclusive, for the head clerk hastily changed the subject to the necessary preparations. But two days could be allowed, as the Distant Depot lay up a river that was only navigable for six months in the year; and four of these were already overpast. It was rather a rush, but the present occupant of the post had unexpectedly accepted the agency of a liquor shop; and the half-yearly market must not find "Our Firm" without a representative. So the first mail--it was a journey of six or seven weeks--must be the one. If any money was wanted--"Thank you, sir," replied Alexander Blooker; "the fifty pounds of my own that my aunt left me will do for the present: by-and-by perhaps----"
He looked mysterious, but he said no more to anyone; unless he whispered something to the glass case illustrating cotton manufactures in the Imperial Institute, which had always had an especial fascination for him. Despite his hurry, he was looking at the peculiarly broad borders of a pile of piece goods and muttering under his breath, "If you tike a hinch you may as well tike a hell," when a man of gold lace and buttons found him, after closing time, and hustled him by corridors of Imperial pickle bottle into the Sahara of Exhibition Road.
Within two months he was--to use his own expression--"taking down the shutters" in a very different desert. For the "Distant Depot" lay at the Back o' Beyont. Whereabouts in the World-Circle matters nothing. Briefly, it was one of those advancing tentacles of civilisation boasting the Mission-House, the Dry-Goods-Store or two and the Whisky-Shop, which carry between them civilisation to the aboriginal. Beyond it lay desolation, except for a single telegraph wire which spanned the void towards the west, instead of following the tortuous curves of the river (now sinking into sandbanks), which after a long course south-eastward eventually found itself at the same goal--the sea-board. There was no town to speak of; only a cluster of leaf-huts, besides the Mission-House and Chapel, the two Stores and the Liquor-Shop. And these were so close clustered that to Alexander Blooker, when he rose to look out over his new world on the morning after his arrival, it seemed as if the bell which was being rung from the Chapel was a general invitation to pray, and buy, and drink.
But it was a pretty little place. A real oasis in the surrounding desert of sands, and almost bewilderingly green amidst thickets of banana trees.
A tall fat man showed in the verandah of the opposition.
"Guten, morgen, mien freund," he called, with superb indifference. "I gif you welcome."
That was doubtless Franz Braun, the German rival, and Alexander Blooker hated him at sight; but he kept his dignity.
"The same to you, sir," he replied stiffly, "I trust trade is good."
"It is goot for me," remarked Franz Braun, with an air for which Alexander Blooker could have kicked him. That being impossible owing to their relative sizes, the little man relieved his bellicose feelings by beginning on "'Twas in Trafalgar Bay." It still had for him the charm of novelty to be able to beat time when and where he chose.