"And as for the drink—it must be a great occasion, indeed, Captain, when you take more than is good for a man. And so—"
"We can never take too much drink in good company, Rimmle. And so drink up—here's health! And so you think it must be—" He smiled faintly at the agent. "And yet who should know better than you that all the gold I ever gave for a woman's favor would not suffice to keep the poorest of them in cambric handkerchiefs."
[pg 125]
"As to that"—the agent pursed up his full moist lips—"it is true; the kind who looked for money were never your kind. And yet that kind sometimes cost men a hundred times more in the end."
Captain Blaise bent deferentially toward the agent. "You think that, Rimmle—truly?"
Rimmle bowed wisely.
Captain Blaise continued to regard him in the most friendly way, and yet with an air of doubt, as if debating how far to discuss matters of this kind with him. And then, leaning yet further forward and speaking rapidly, energetically: "And agreeing that it is so, who is it that ever regrets the price? D'y' think that I, even though I be what I be, that I—Why, Rimmle, even you who live to amass money"—Rimmle flushed—"even you have had your days when—To be sure you have had." Rimmle beamed. "And so, Rimmle, you can believe possibly that Captain Blaise may yet have his immortal hour, and cherish the hope none the less dearly in his heart because his head, from out the experience of bitter years, tells him that it can never be. And it may be that I go this time for neither money nor drink, nor anything else in which traders ashore or aship commonly bargain. But, hah, hah!"—he grinned suddenly, sardonically, at the agent. "Think of us, Rimmle, sitting in the cabin [pg 126] of a West Coast slaver and smuggler discoursing in this fashion—two gallant gentlemen who trade in human misery."
Ten years since Captain Blaise had done any slave-running, and Rimmle, who knew that, was slave-running still, and so he did not quite know how to take this outburst.
Neither did I. Where Captain Blaise was sincere and where talking for effect I could not have said; but surely he was moulding Rimmle like jelly; and now looking out from under his eyebrow at Rimmle, but his lips curved in a smile, he selected a cheroot and lit it, and lit another for Rimmle, who now smiled too. And cheroot followed cheroot, and story story, and drink drink, and the agent gurgled with joy of the intimacy. "What adventures you have had, Captain, and"—he blew a cloud to the cabin roof—"what stories!"