“You lazy dog,” he said, smiling pleasantly nevertheless as I entered, and pushing the dish of sliced pork over to the place where my plate was set. “You idle ruffian, do you know that it’s nearly two bells and that we made the land at daybreak?” “Made the land!” I exclaimed excitedly. “Why, I didn’t know you expected to see land for another week.” “We might have seen it any time this last ten days, for we’ve been sailing parallel to the coast ever since we rounded Cape Palmas, and never much more than twenty miles off.” “Whereabouts are we now?” I asked. “Just passing Cape St. Paul. Oh, you needn’t excite yourself,” for I was rising to go on deck, “there’s nothing to see, only a thin grey line with a few cocoa nuts like pins stuck into the horizon. It’s a scurvy-looking coast, this.” “When do you expect to make your port?” I inquired eagerly. “Port!” he exclaimed contemptuously, “there are no ports here, my lad; just open roadsteads with a swell that’s enough to roll the sticks out of a vessel, and a surf pounding the beach that would kick the stuffing out of an Institution lifeboat.” “That’s jolly,” I remarked. “Ah, you’ll say so when you have to go ashore through it. But to return to the ‘port’ question; we shall be off Quittáh in about an hour--sit down, man, for God’s sake! and drink your coffee like a Christian--and as a good bit of the cargo is going ashore there, we shall have our anchor down maybe for a week or two.” I took a gulp at the hot coffee and began to stow away the corned pork and biscuit with a speed that did not escape the Captain’s notice, for he remarked with a grin: “Don’t gobble your grub like that, Englefield. Africa’ll keep, never fear. Besides, lad, I want to have a bit of serious talk with you.” I slowed down my mastication and indicated that I was all attention. “Well, now,” said the Captain, “you remember what I told you about this trip--that our business was more to trade than to carry freight. We’ve got some tons of stuff for a merchant here in Quittáh--a Portuguese named Pereira--and a biggish consignment for a German down at Bagidá; but more than half the cargo is our own, and we’ve got to turn our goods into produce by trading on our own hook. Well, you see, most of the trading has got to be done ashore, for the niggers won’t bring their produce on board through the surf, nor will they come on board to buy our stuff when there are stores ashore where they can buy, so the governor has made arrangements with Pereira to hire a store at Quittáh by the lagoon side close to the market place, and I have got to stock that store--or factory, as they call it out here--with trade goods and put somebody in charge of it to sell the goods and buy the produce.