His companion was thin and angular, quick-eyed and nervous in his movements, as though he moved on a gear of higher speed than his opponent in the game. He crouched over the table when he shuffled the cards or played them, without lifting his elbows from the table, in the fashion of a jealous dog with a bone. He wore a blue cap with a polished black visor, tilted back on his head, giving him a rakish, devil-may-care aspect. His long and lean face, cut with wrinkles, was twisted into a sly grin, as if he thought he had the advantage of the other man.
The tapa curtains were closed. The alcove was lighted from two of the narrow windows, cut so high in the wall that they gave no view of the Mole and the street outside unless a man were to climb on a chair and get his shoulders on a level with the bamboo rafters, where the tiny lizards prowled in the dust and hunted flies.
The roar of the docks surged through dull and confused, a medley of clanking hatch-covers, complaining tackle, deep-throated protests of donkey-engines, outlandish commands from stevedores, and the yelps of high-strung little tugs bossing the lighters.
Vanderzee pottered at his books behind the bar, smoking a china pipe. His watchful eye was on his Chinese boy polishing the brasswork of the taps. The last of the noon idlers had gone, and the door leading to the Mole was shut against the hot breeze lifting from the sun's glare on the river.
Then a beam of light whipped across the floor with a shuffle of feet on the stone steps outside. Captain Dinshaw tottered in, gasping for breath and shaking with excitement.
"Van!" he cried, weakly, making for the bar. "I'm rich!"
The black man grunted, and put his pipe in his mouth, staring past Dinshaw at the door as if he expected to see a pursuing party burst in and attack the old man, who seemed spent from running.
"Who's der drouble?" he growled. "For v'y you roon?"
"I've hauled the wind!" cried Dinshaw, dropping his parcel on the bar, and throwing up his hands in a gesture of wild delight.
"My luck's turned! I'm a rich man, I tell ye!"