“Well, give us another glass.”
The last lot put up for sale—a gajoeng, that is a simple cocoa-nut vessel with a handle used for throwing water over the body in the bath, fetched five and twenty guilders.
The friends of Verstork might well congratulate each other. They had worked to some purpose. When half an hour later the clerk posted up the total receipts, the house very nearly came down with the deafening cheers.
“Nine thousand seven hundred and forty guilders!” exclaimed Verstork, when he heard the result of the sale; “why, the whole kit was not worth three thousand. Thanks, many thanks, my friends.”
He shook hands warmly with van Nerekool, with Grashuis, with van Beneden and with Grenits. “You have saved me many an hour of dreadful anxiety,” he whispered to them.
Eight days after, the Controller was standing, in excellent spirits, on the deck of the Tamborah which was to convey him to his new abode. Full of courage and full of hope, he took leave of the trusty friends who accompanied him to the steamer.
“Once again,” he cried to them from the deck, “thanks, a thousand thanks!”
Grenits had helped him to realise as profitably as possible the proceeds of the sale, and when he reached Batavia he had sent a considerable portion of the money to his mother, recommending her to be very careful of it, as he might most probably be obliged, in consequence of his removal from Banjoe Pahit, to diminish the amount of his monthly remittances.
When the Tambora was nearly on the horizon there were still handkerchiefs waving farewell to him from the shore-boat.
Verstork still kept on deck gazing at the shore. “Fine noble fellows,” he muttered as he wiped away a tear.