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Updated: May 10, 2025
We had neither of us gone abroad except for a few vulgar raids on Paris; our world was England, are the places of origin of half the raw material of the goods we sold had seemed to us as remote as fairyland or the forest of Arden. But Gordon-Nasmyth made it so real and intimate for us that afternoon for me, at any rate that it seemed like something seen and forgotten and now again remembered.
I think perhaps Gordon-Nasmyth had the artistic temperament and wanted contrasts, and also that the captain helped him to express his own malignant Anti-Britishism. He was indeed an exceptionally inefficient captain. On the whole I was glad I had come even at the eleventh hour to see to things. I suspected the mate of his opinion of the captain long before he expressed it.
Suppose that quantity was high enough to justify our shipload, came doubts in another quarter. Were the heaps up to sample? Were they as big as he said? Was Gordon-Nasmyth imaginative? And if these values held, could we after all get the stuff? It wasn't ours. It was on forbidden ground. You see, there were doubts of every grade and class in the way of this adventure.
Confound it, uncle! Its Gordon-Nasmyth! Sit down. What is it? Minerals?" "Quap," said Gordon-Nasmyth, fixing his eye on me, "in heaps." "In heaps," said my uncle softly, with his glasses very oblique. "You're only fit for the grocery," said Gordon-Nasmyth scornfully, sitting down and helping himself to one of my uncle's cigars. "I'm sorry I came.
As we drew near the African coast his fear of rocks and shoals became infectious. "I do not know dis coast," he used to say. "I cama hera because Gordon-Nasmyth was coming too. Den he does not come!" "Fortunes of war," I said, and tried to think in vain if any motive but sheer haphazard could have guided Gordon-Nasmyth in the choice of these two men.
But they're not great at catching." We went into the particulars of that difficulty. "They wouldn't catch me, because I'd sink first. Give me a yacht," said Gordon-Nasmyth; "that's all I need." "But if you get caught," said my uncle. I am inclined to think Gordon-Nasmyth imagined we would give him a cheque for six thousand pounds on the strength of his talk.
We had to buy the captain off; we had to promise him ten per cent. of our problematical profits. We were to give him ten per cent. on what we sold the cargo for over and above his legitimate pay, and I found in my out-bargained and disordered state small consolation in the thought that I, as the Gordon-Nasmyth expedition, was to sell the stuff to myself as Business Organisations.
To begin with, Gordon-Nasmyth was inclined to be dramatic. "Look here," he said when he first came in, shutting the door rather carefully behind him as he spoke, "do you two men yes or no want to put up six thousand for a clear good chance of fifteen hundred per cent. on your money in a year?"
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