“I shall give you fifty dollars a hogshead for your sugar, and take all,” he said, as he accosted and bowed to the captain, at the same time presenting his cigar case.
“No,” the captain briefly replied, returning the salute, while, at the same time, he accepted the usual West Indian courtesy, and took a cigar from the proffered case.
The merchant sat down at the table too, and requested the waiter, who brought the disguised captain a glass of sangaree, to serve him with the same. He then took out a cigar and began to smoke negligently, as if his mind was as little occupied by thoughts of business as that of a child.
They sat together for a considerable time without exchanging a word—a circumstance of rare occurrence in the talkative tropics, where men endeavour to find in conversation the relaxation which the places of amusement of other countries afford. But the disguised captain was one whose looks did not encourage access, nor was he one whom we would address by mere casualty or for the sake of a moment’s pastime. Without being repulsive in appearance he was from a general manner that could not be easily understood, but which was at once felt, sufficiently uninviting as not to encourage any one to address him unless he himself was the first to speak. The merchant therefore did not feel quite assured and was by no means tempted to open a conversation with him. The disguised captain on his part was from natural disposition and taste, not inclined to exchange more words with the merchant or any other person in the island, than were absolutely necessary to the accomplishment of the object which brought him to St. Thomas—namely, the sale of the ship’s cargo.
But, if looks are in a generality of instances justly accounted deceptive, they can always be considered so with perhaps much more truth in the merchant, whose business it is to assume the air of cold indifference, and to pretend to care but very little about the transaction in question, while perhaps his palm already itches over the bargain which he keenly meditates, and while he is perhaps already feasting in imagination on the princely returns which he anticipates from it.
“Come, I shall give you fifty-five,” the merchant said, after a number of whiffs.
“No,” the captain replied, in the same dry tone as before, looking straight before him, indifferently smoking his cigar.
The pursuits of his life time were so different from those of the generality of men, that besides the stern cynicism in which he had tutored himself, and the habit of contemplation that he had cultivated, he would not have been able to take interest in any intercourse with them. Perhaps, also there was not a little of pride intermixed with his silence. Accustomed to measure the stars, and to associate his thoughts with the sublimity of the heavenly regions, and raised to a proper estimation of himself by the given opinion of the many universities in which he had studied, and which had declared him a man of extraordinary talent, he almost scorned the intercourse of one who could speak to him only about the state of the market, the amount of money that certain individuals happened to possess, and the other things connected with the occupation of buying and selling.
Besides, he had long ceased to hold intercourse with living men—except, indeed, when it was necessary either to command them, to feed them, or to give them drink. He had found that too much evil was mixed up with the little good that he could derive from their society, and not considering that the mere endurance of the former was an object that was so worthy in itself as to command the exercise of his fortitude, he thought it prudent to refrain both from listening to the expressed thoughts of others and intruding his upon them. Books therefore, he made his companions—books, that could not deceive, could not betray, could not be mean, could not be penurious, could not make to suffer, could not disgust; but which contained the best of dead men’s thoughts without much of their vileness.