"Why not?" Van Slyck concentrated his attention on his cigar.
"Neen, neen, let us have no bloodshed," Muller vetoed anxiously. "We have had enough—" He looked around nervously as though he feared someone might be overhearing him. "Let him alone. We shall find some way to get rid of him. But let there be no killing."
Van Slyck turned his attention from the landscape to the controlleur. There was a look in the captain's face that made Muller wince and shift his eyes, a look of cyincal contempt, calm, frank, and unconcealed. It was the mask lifting, for Van Slyck despised his associate. Bold and unscrupulous, sticking at nothing that might achieve his end, he had no patience with the timid, faltering, often conscience-stricken controlleur.
"Well, mynheer," Van Slyck observed at length, "you are getting remarkably thin-skinned all of a sudden."
He laughed sardonically. Muller winced and replied hastily:
"I have been thinking, kapitein, that the proa crews have been doing too much killing lately. I am going to tell Ah Sing that it must be stopped. There are other ways—we can unload the ships and land their crews on some island—"
"To starve, or to be left to the tender mercies of the Bajaus and the Bugis," Van Slyck sneered. "That would be more tender-hearted. You would at least transfer the responsibility."
Muller's agitation became more pronounced.
"But we must not let it go on, kapitein," he urged. "It hurts the business. Pretty soon we will have an investigation, one of these gun-boats will pick up one of our proas, somebody will tell, and what will happen to us then?"
"We'll be hung," Van Slyck declared succinctly.