To anyone without a nice sense for spiritual values, everything is merely a matter of price, and Elderkin's fee for the loss of his ship and with her his soul was higher than the partners could have wished. They were greasy men, with the Spanish strain, that too often, in those latitudes, means a hint of the negro as well, and their office was on the outskirts of the dirty vulture-ridden Port of Spain of those days. The room was bare, and upon the blotchy whitewash of the wall there hung nothing but a map and a few advertisements. The mosquitoes sang through the unscreened windows; outside, in the dusty strip of bleached earth between the house and the road, a hedge of hibiscus was in bloom. In the glaring sunshine the flaunting back-curled blossoms seemed afire as they shot their thin vermeil tongues out into the air made so alive with light. To Elderkin, as he sat in the dimmed room, full of green reflections from the vegetation without, came the unpleasant thought that it was as though he were under seas . . . and the flaming tongues of the hibiscus were some evil sea-growth, mocking at his plight. He leaned forward and helped himself again from the bottle of whisky that stood upon the bare table. When he lifted it a crescent of gold fled across the table, slipping back again when he set the bottle down, as a ripple of reflected light runs through water. Elderkin had often seen a gleam like it when watching a small bright fish flash through a pool. His reluctant mind responded to the kick of the liquor: the dirty little room, the watchful eyes of the partners as they sat on either side of him in their soiled linen suits, no longer seemed so unpleasant to him, accustomed as he was to the sordidness that, if care is not exercised, so soon overtakes an interior in the tropics. His caution still remained to him, and he sounded the scheme at every point, finding the partners were prepared, full of urgings, advices, rosy forecasts, cunning details. On the homeward voyage, that would be best . . . he could take her out in ballast, bring her back loaded to her limit and beyond it. . . . Those were days before the Plimsoll mark, and vessels often left port--even great English ports--so loaded that their scuppers were all but awash, and not only left but perhaps attempted the passage round the Horn itself. There would be no difficulty about that, but Captain Elderkin must, of course, not sail from a Peruvian harbour as the authorities there had an unpleasant habit of marking a load-line on every ship that cleared and seeing that she did not go above it. Besides, a cargo was awaiting him in Chili, and the partners were prepared about that too. It was to be a double deal, the actual copper and nitrates, with a small amount of gold, which she would go out to take was, by arrangement with a certain official known to the partners, to be changed for sand and stones. Just a sprinkling of nitrate at the top, perhaps, since nitrate is loaded in bulk.