Page:'Twixt land and sea - tales (IA twixtlandseatale00conr).pdf/56

 were not morally obliged to tell you of a possible shortage before you signed the charter-party. It was for you to guard against the contingency of a delaystrictly speaking. But of course we shouldn’t have taken any advantage. This is no one’s fault really. We ourselves have been taken unawares,” he concluded primly, with an obvious lie.

This lecture I confess had made me thirsty. Suppressed rage generally produces that effect; and as I strolled on aimlessly I bethought myself of the tall earthenware pitcher in the captains’ room of the Jacobus “store.”

With no more than a nod to the men I found assembled there, I poured down a deep, cool draught on my indignation, then another, and then, becoming dejected, I sat plunged in cheerless reflections. The others read, talked, smoked, bandied over my head some unsubtle chaff. But my abstraction was respected. And it was without a word to any one that I rose and went out, only to be quite unexpectedly accosted in the bustle of the store by Jacobus the outcast.

“Glad to see you, Captain. What? Going away? You haven’t been looking so well these last few days, I notice. Run down, eh?”

He was in his shirt-sleeves, and his words were in the usual course of business, but they had a human note. It was commercial amenity, but I had been a stranger to amenity in that connection. I do verily believe (from the direction of his heavy glance towards a certain shelf) that he was going to suggest the purchase of Clarkson’s Nerve Tonic, which he kept in stock, when I said impulsively: