Muller's fingers leaped in an involuntary frantic gesture to his throat, as though he felt cords tightening around his windpipe. His face paled.
"Lieve hemel, kapitein, don't speak of such things," he gasped.
"Then don't talk drivel," Van Slyck snarled. "You can't make big profits without taking big chances. And you can't have piracy without a little blood-letting. We're in this now, and there's no going back. So stop your squealing."
Settling back into his chair, he looked calmly seaward and exhaled huge clouds of tobacco smoke. The frown deepened on Muller's troubled brow as he stared vacantly across the crushed coral-shell highway.
"You can think of no reason why his excellency should be offended with us, kapitein?" he ventured anxiously.
The controlleur's eagerness to include him in his misfortune, evidenced by the use of the plural pronoun, evoked a sardonic flicker in Van Slyck's cold, gray eyes.
"No, mynheer, I cannot conceive why the governor should want to get rid of so valuable a public servant as you are," he assured ironically. "You have certainly done your best. There have been a few disturbances, of course, some head-hunting, and the taxes have not been paid, but outside of such minor matters everything has done well, very well indeed."
"Donder en bliksem," Muller exclaimed, "how can I raise taxes when those Midianites, the hill Dyaks, will not let my coast Dyaks grow a spear of rice? Has there been a month without a raid? Answer me, kapitein. Have you spent a whole month in the stockade without being called to beat back some of these thieving plunderers and drive them into their hills?"
The sardonic smile flashed across Van Slyck's face again.
"Quite true, mynheer. But sometimes I don't know if I blame the poor devils. They tell me they're only trying to get even because your coast Dyaks and Ah Sing's crowd rob them so. Ah Sing must be making quite a profit out of the slave business. I'll bet he shipped two hundred to China last year."