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"What's this?" demanded Jarrow, turning back to stare at the bill. Vanderzee leaned over the bar, and Peth craned his neck forward, maintaining his eternal grin. They had never seen Dinshaw with so much wealth before. "Money!" piped Dinshaw, triumphantly. "Has he gone plumb loco?" asked Jarrow, looking at Vanderzee. "Dot money ain'd crassy," said the black man.
"I'd have to shift my duds," he said, "and I ain't for huntin' sharks' eggs on Looney's say. What ye think, Peth? Shall we fill up that way?" "I ain't no hand for them swells," said Peth. "You go, cap'n, an' I'll stand by down here with Dinshaw." "Vait!" said Vanderzee, holding up a black hand. "Vot's der name? Locke!" He stepped into a tiny office behind the bar.
How'm I to git a charter for the Nuestra, with you and yer slack jaw runnin' wild up and down the waterfront tellin' all hands and the ship's cook I'm goin' to yer blasted island in my schooner? Hop in the river, but keep clear o' me and mine! Won't have it from ye!" "Der sun his het in," said Vanderzee, with a significant nod toward Dinshaw. He wanted to avoid trouble. "He iss crassy."
They babble of things which their employers would have kept secret, their tongues limbered by drams from square-shouldered greenish bottles, Dutch as dykes, which line the shelves behind the bar. The Cuartel is owned by a black man from Batavia who calls himself Vanderzee. His mother was a Kling.
It's about time Prayerful Jones was shut of lettin' loose his bums and lunatics on us folks with property." "No harm," said Vanderzee, soothingly. "I say it is harm! I'm hailed whurever I go about this business of the old un's island, Van! Just 'cause I've got a schooner, it's Jarrow, Jarrow, Jarrow! I'd look fine and smart cruisin' round for a P. D. island, wouldn't I? Now tell me that?"
"Thinks I'm foremast in his brig," said Jarrow, with a leer at Vanderzee. "You better cut over across the river," said Dinshaw, "and tell him you're ready and you'll have the Nuestra alongside the Mole by dark to take on stores, or he'll have another boat. He said somethin' about knowin' a man out here who had a yacht, comin' down from Japan." "Smoke," said Peth.
"I'd believe ye sooner if ye said ye saw pink elephants," said Jarrow. "Git down to cases. What's his name?" "Money talks," suggested Vanderzee. "Moonshine!" declared Peth. "His name's Locke," said Dinshaw. "Will ye go, Jarrow? I'll make ye all rich." "Now what did this Locke man say?" demanded Jarrow. "I don't want any ravin's. I want facts, straight out, so you come up into the wind.
He paused, as if at a loss for words to express his disgust, and pulled a cigar from his pocket. He bit the end from it with a twisting motion of his head. The tall man sighed wearily. "Ach!" said Vanderzee. "No harm. Who iss to giff mind to vat he say? He iss crassy." "There's a-plenty to give mind to it," snarled Jarrow. "Didn't I lose a charter last dry season to bring wood from Mindoro?
And a stevedore made something like a million dollars out of a cargo of canned salmon by hearing some cockney give his theory about how the blockade could be run to Port Arthur. Vanderzee made some of his profits out of a little room at the far end of his bar, where a man could sit hidden by tawny tapa curtains rove on a bamboo pole, and have privacy while he heard what was being said at the bar.
The roar of the docks surged through dull and confused, a medley of clanking hatch-covers, complaining tackle, deep-throated protests of donkey-engines, outlandish commands from stevedores, and the yelps of high-strung little tugs bossing the lighters. Vanderzee pottered at his books behind the bar, smoking a china pipe. His watchful eye was on his Chinese boy polishing the brasswork of the taps.
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