Page:'Twixt land and sea - tales (IA twixtlandseatale00conr).pdf/106

 I said negligently: “Oh, yes, I could spare you a ton. Fifteen pounds.”

He exclaimed: “I say!” But after studying my face for a while accepted my terms with a faint grimace. It seems that these people could not exist without potatoes. I could. I didn’t want to see a potato as long as I lived; but the demon of lucre had taken possession of me. How the news got about I don’t know, but, returning on board rather late, I found a small group of men of the coster type hanging about the waist, while Mr. Burns walked to and fro the quarterdeck loftily, keeping a triumphant eye on them. They had come to buy potatoes.

“These chaps have been waiting here in the sun for hours,” Burns whispered tome excitedly. “They have drunk the water-cask dry. Don’t you throw away your chances, sir. You are too good-natured.”

I selected a man with thick legs and a man with a cast in his eye to negotiate with; simply because they were easily distinguishable from the rest. “You have the money on you?” I inquired, before taking them down into the cabin.

“Yes, sir,” they answered in one voice, slapping their pockets. I liked their air of quiet determination. Long before the end of the day all the potatoes were sold at about three times the price I had paid for them. Mr. Burns, feverish and exulting, congratulated himself on his skilful care of my commercial venture, but hinted plainly that I ought to have made more of it.

That night I did not sleep very well. I thought of Jacobus by fits and starts, between snatches of dreams concerned with castaways starving on a desert island