Peter Gross sighed and straightened to his full six feet two. "Thank you, captain," he said, "but I must go alone. I want to teach Bulungan one thing to-day—that Peter Gross is not afraid."
While Captain Carver was vainly trying to dissuade Peter Gross from going ashore, Kapitein Van Slyck hastened from his quarters at the fort to the controlleur's house. Muller was an uncertain quantity in a crisis, the captain was aware; it was vital that they act in perfect accord. He found his associate pacing agitatedly in the shade of a screen of nipa palms between whose broad leaves he could watch the trim white hull and spotless decks of the gun-boat.
Muller was smoking furiously. At the crunch of Van Slyck's foot on the coraled walk he turned quickly, with a nervous start, and his face blanched.
"Oh, kapitein," he exclaimed with relief, "is it you?"
"Who else would it be?" Van Slyck growled, perceiving at once that Muller had worked himself into a frenzy of apprehension.
"I don't know. I thought, perhaps, Cho Seng—"
"You look as though you'd seen a ghost. What's there about Cho Seng to be afraid of?"
"—that Cho Seng had come to tell me Mynheer Gross was here," Muller faltered.
Van Slyck looked at him keenly, through narrowed lids.
"Hum!" he grunted with emphasis. "So it is Mynheer Gross already with you, eh, Muller?"