“I replied quietly that I would. ‘I shall be delighted,’ said I, ‘to furnish half a dozen new boats and to pay for the men to row them until the new turnover begins. All I ask is that you shall still keep your present earnings, but share with me in equal amounts the new and extra earnings which my plan will almost certainly produce.’
“It took me some time to rub into his rusty head the terms of my very favourable proposal. He kept on mixing up the division of any future profits and the division of his present income. Never did I appreciate more than during my conversations with this stupid granfer the necessity for patience in spreading a commercial snare. I was at fearful pains to get the thing into his obtuse brain. He could be no poorer, for I asked nothing of his present earnings: he might be much richer, for he would have half any future additions. I would guarantee him the income he was already earning on condition that the much larger income to be earned by my methods should, over and above that guaranteed revenue of his, be equally divided between us.
“He still seemed to think that there was some flaw or catch somewhere. He wanted the thing, simple as it was, explained to him over and over again. At last he got it clear; he got by heart and repeated the refrain: ‘Cannot be poorer, may be richer.’ Nor did it occur to him to wonder why I was so oddly generous.
“I had our contract drawn up in due form, witnessed and sealed. I then caused to be constructed by the local shipwrights four first-class flat boats, some ten diram long by five wide. I saw to it that they should be painted in gay colours and in general have that vulgar violence so attractive to the masses. On their completion I added them to the existing capital of the ferry line.
“At the same time I pointed out to him who was now my partner something which that same stupidity of his had made him miss, to wit, that as he had a monopoly his charges were far too low. ‘Moreover,’ said I, ‘when you consider what fine new boats I have put into service and how, as a consequence, the stream of traffic is increasing, to neglect the opportunity of profit is a great sin for which you will be answerable on the Day of Resurrection. Why, it was but yesterday that you passed over twice as many people, you assured me, as ever you did in any other one day in your life!’
“So wedded to custom was the old gentleman that he still hesitated, but remembering how right I had been in my innovation and unable to contest the evidence of his own eyes how from day to day the volume of traffic increased, he at last somewhat reluctantly consented. The fares were doubled, yet the applications of people desiring to cross the river grew no less. There arose a substantial profit, over and above the old ferryman’s original income, to be divided between us, and judged by the cost of the new boats I was making some ten per cent. upon my money, a very reasonable profit under the circumstances....”
Here Mahmoud the great merchant, paused, shut his eyes for a few moments, and continued in a murmur. “A very reasonable profit. Ten per cent., a very reasonable profit.” Then, suddenly opening his eyes fiercely, he fixed them upon his alarmed nephews and cried.
“Was it not strange for a man of my temperament to remain thus pottering with a few boats and leaving sacks full of coin unused? You have only heard the beginning of the scheme upon which I was engaged!
“I had already purchased a very nice little property with a convenient house upon it, standing some yards back from the bank of the river and perhaps one hundred yards above the ferry.
“I next purchased a field upon the further bank, exactly opposite this house and its garden. I amused myself sometimes by rowing across the river from the steps at the foot of my ground to the field which I had purchased upon the other side. I sowed that field with beans of a particular kind with which (so I assured my neighbours), I was experimenting after an agricultural fashion. They were much interested, for agriculture is highly developed in that part, with the result that the highest arts, especially those of finance, are shamefully neglected.