He had a liking for his benefactor, not unmixed with some disdain for the crude directness of the old fellow’s methods of conduct. There were, however, certain sides of Lingard’s character for which Willems felt a qualified respect. The talkative seaman knew how to be silent on certain matters that to Willems were very interesting. Besides, Lingard was rich, and that in itself was enough to compel Willems’ unwilling admiration. In his confidential chats with Hudig, Willems generally alluded to the benevolent Englishman as the “lucky old fool” in a very distinct tone of vexation; Hudig would grunt an unqualified assent, and then the two would look at each other in a sudden immobility of pupils fixed by a stare of unexpressed thought.

“You can’t find out where he gets all that india-rubber, hey Willems?” Hudig would ask at last, turning away and bending over the papers on his desk.

“No, Mr. Hudig. Not yet. But I am trying,” was Willems’ invariable reply, delivered with a ring of regretful deprecation.

“Try! Always try! You may try! You think yourself clever perhaps,” rumbled on Hudig, without looking up. “I have been trading with him twenty — thirty years now. The old fox. And I have tried. Bah!”

He stretched out a short, podgy leg and contemplated the bare instep and the grass slipper hanging by the toes. “You can’t make him drunk?” he would add, after a pause of stertorous breathing.

“No, Mr. Hudig, I can’t really,” protested Willems, earnestly.

“Well, don’t try. I know him. Don’t try,” advised the master, and, bending again over his desk, his staring bloodshot eyes close to the paper, he would go on tracing laboriously with his thick fingers the slim unsteady letters of his correspondence, while Willems waited respectfully for his further good pleasure before asking, with great deference —

“Any orders, Mr. Hudig?”

“Hm! yes. Go to Bun-Hin yourself and see the dollars of that payment counted and packed, and have them put on board the mail-boat for Ternate. She’s due here this afternoon.”

“Yes, Mr. Hudig.”

“And, look here. If the boat is late, leave the case in Bun-Hin’s godown till to-morrow. Seal it up. Eight seals as usual. Don’t take it away till the boat is here.”

“No, Mr. Hudig.”

“And don’t forget about these opium cases. It’s for to-night. Use my own boatmen. Transship them from the Caroline to the Arab barque,” went on the master in his hoarse undertone. “And don’t you come to me with another story of a case dropped overboard like last time,” he added, with sudden ferocity, looking up at his confidential clerk.

“No, Mr. Hudig.