With unexpected agility Captain van Toch slapped both his cheeks with the palm and the back of his hand to bring him round.

‘Thanks, sahib,’ the short Singhalese breathed, and his pupils again swam out in the white of his eyes.

‘AH right now?’

‘Yes, sahib.’

‘Any shells there?’

‘Yes, sahib.’

Captain van Toch continued his cross-examination with a great deal of patience and thoroughness. OK, so there are devils there. How many? Thousands and thousands. They’re about as tall as a child of ten, sir, and nearly black. They swim in the water and on the sea-bed they walk upright. Upright, sir, just like you and me, but they sway their bodies the while: like this, and like this, all the time … Yes, sir, they’ve got hands too, just like human beings; no, they’ve got no claws, more like the hands of children. No, sir, they haven’t got any horns or any hair. Yes, they’ve got a tail, a bit like a fish but without a tail-fin. And a big head, a round head like the Bataks. No, sir, they didn’t say anything; they only seemed to smack their lips. As the Singhalese was cutting off some shells at a depth of about fifty feet he had felt something touching his back - like small cold fingers. He’d turned round, and there were hundreds and hundreds of them all round him. Hundreds and hundreds, sir, swimming or standing on rocks, and all of them watching what the Singhalese was doing there. That was when he’d dropped his knife and the shells and had tried to swim to the surface. In doing so he’d collided with some of the devils who were swimming above him, and what happened next he didn’t know, sir.

Captain van Toch gazed thoughtfully at the trembling little diver. That boy wouldn’t be any use for anything, he thought to himself; he’d send him home to Ceylon from Padang. Growling and snorting he went back to his cabin. There he tipped out two pearls from the bag on to his table. One of them was as small as a grain of sand and the other was like a pea, with a silvery gleam and a touch of pink. And the captain of the Dutch ship snorted and took his Irish whisky from the cupboard.

Towards six o’clock he again had himself taken in the boat to the kampong, and made straight for that cross between a Cuban and a Portuguese. ‘Toddy,’ he said, and that was the only word he uttered; he sat on the corrugated iron verandah with a thick glass between his thick fingers, and drank and spat and peered from beneath his bushy eyebrows at the scrawny yellow hens which were pecking heaven knows what on the trampled dirt yard between the palms. The half-breed was careful not to say anything and merely filled the glasses. Gradually the captain’s eyes became bloodshot and his fingers began to lack response. It was nearly dusk when he got to his feet and yanked up his trousers.

‘Turning in already, captain?’ the half-breed between the devil and Satan inquired courteously.

The captain stabbed his finger into the air. ‘I’d be damned surprised,’ he said, ‘if there were any devils in the world whom I’ve yet to come across. You man, which way is bloody northwest?’

‘That way,’ the half-breed pointed. ‘Where are you off to, sir?’

‘To hell,’ Captain J. van Toch growled. ‘Going to have a look at Devil Bay.’

That evening marked the start of Captain J. van Toch’s eccentricity.