"He is, blight him!" said Captain Image with emphasis. "I called in there two or three times after I'd got some of those please-buck-up letters from O'Neill and Craven, that I didn't care about, and the cauliflower-headed old humbug clean took me in. He was Mr. Crewdson, to be sure; no, he was not Mr. K. O'Neill; no, I couldn't see Mr. K. just then; no, he couldn't make an appointment for me with the gentleman; anything I wanted he would attend to personally. If I re-read the letters he was sure I should find that they were not unreasonable, but, on the other hand, would put me in the way of earning extra commission on cargo for myself. So it ended in my being civil to him, and he was really nothing more than a clerk. You can just picture to yourself, Purser, what I felt when I found out that I'd been civil to a clerk by mistake." "It was pretty hard lines, sir." "Of course a West African merchant's business is a rum contract for a young girl to catch hold of, and I don't say Miss Kate was wrong in keeping in the background to start with. In fact I'll own up straight that she was right, and the proof's plain in the way that firm's come back to life. Why, Purser, I'll bet you a bottle of Eno that O'Neill and Craven are doing just double the turn-over now they did twelve months ago." "You'll know best about that, sir," said Mr. Balgarnie with a sigh, as he remembered that only Captain Image touched commission on the cargo which the _M'poso_ collected on the Coast. "But I will own up that she has got the knack of making all the smarter men in the firm both on the Coast and at Liverpool keen on her when they thought she was a man. Of course it was a bit unlikely that the old-timer palm-oil ruffians like Swizzle-Stick Smith and Owe-it-Slade would take to new ways that meant more work, all at once, though for that matter I'll bet Slade put off making up his mind for so long as to whether he liked hustling or he didn't, that finally he dropped into the new ways without knowing it." "Slade's gone off up-country to find the firm a rubber property, Purser, me lad. Laura told me about it last night. She hasn't heard of him once since he pulled out of Smooth River, and she's very anxious about him. I hope none of those up-country bushmen have chopped Slade. I should be sorry to lose that man. He owes me a matter of three sovereigns, and that old Holland gun of mine that he borrowed for half an hour eighteen months ago has gone up-country with him. I believe he's in the ribs of the fo'c'sle shop, too, for the thick end of a fiver."