“What's the matter?” Grief asked. “Haven't you started yet?”
McTavish nodded. “And got back. Everything's all right on board.”
“How's New Gibbon?”
“All there, the last I saw of it, barrin' a few inconsequential frills that a good eye could make out lacking from the landscape.”
He was a cold flame of a man, small as Koho, and as dried up, with a mahogany complexion and small, expressionless blue eyes that were more like gimlet-points than the eyes of a Scotchman. Without fear, without enthusiasm, impervious to disease and climate and sentiment, he was lean and bitter and deadly as a snake. That his present sour look boded ill news, Grief was well aware.
“Spit it out!” he said. “What's happened?”
“'Tis a thing severely to be condemned, a damned shame, this joking with heathen niggers,” was the reply. “Also, 'tis very expensive. Come below, Mr. Grief. You'll be better for the information with a long glass in your hand. After you.”
“How did you settle things?” his employer demanded as soon as they were seated in the cabin.
The little Scotchman shook his head. “There was nothing to settle. It all depends how you look at it. The other way would be to say it was settled, entirely settled, mind you, before I got there.”
“But the plantation, man? The plantation?”