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Updated: June 10, 2025
I may as well here give an account of the Barbara, and how I came to be on board her. Deprived of my father, who was killed in battle just as I was going up to the University, and left with very limited means, I was offered a situation as clerk in the counting-house of a distant relative, Mr Janrin. I had no disinclination to mercantile pursuits.
The evening was drawing on, and the weather did not look pleasant; still I must make the attempt. The convoy was expected to sail immediately, and the interests of my employers, Garrard, Janrin and Company, would be sacrificed should the sailing of the ship be delayed by my neglect. These thoughts passed rapidly through my mind and made me reply boldly, "We must go on, at all events.
Garrard, Janrin and Company have reason to be grateful to you, and I have no doubt that they will be so." Everybody knows that Batavia is a large Dutch town built in the tropics that is to say, it has broad streets, with rows of trees in them, and canals in the centre of stagnant water, full of filth, and surrounded by miasma-exuding marshes.
Mr Thursby considered that it was incumbent on him to take a dignified farewell of me, and to impress on me all the duties and responsibilities of my office; but he broke down, and a tear stood in his eye as he wrung my hand, and said in a husky voice, "You know all about it, my dear boy; you'll do well, and we shall have you back here, hearty and strong, with information successfully to guide Garrard, Janrin and Company in many an important speculation; and, moreover, I hope, to lay the foundation of your own fortune.
Without holding my worthy principal in such deep admiration as our head clerk evidently did, I had a most sincere regard and respect for him. Our dinner hour was at one o'clock, in a room over the office. Mr Janrin himself presided, and all the clerks, from the highest to the lowest, sat at the board.
A scar on his cheek and another across his hand, showed that he had been, at close quarters, too, on some occasion, with the enemy. Mr Janrin and Mr Thursby both paid him much attention during dinner.
The guests as they arrived were announced by Mr Janrin's own servant, Peter Klopps, who always waited on these occasions. Peter was himself a character. He was a Dutchman. Mr Janrin had engaged his services many years before during a visit to Holland.
Allusions were made by him to a trading voyage he had performed in the service of the firm, and it struck me from some remarks he let drop that he was about to undertake another of a similar character. I was not mistaken. After dinner, when the rest of the guests were gone, he remained behind to discuss particulars, and Mr Janrin desired me to join the conclave.
He never lost an opportunity of indulging in the joke to his own amusement; and I remarked that he laughed as heartily the last time he uttered it as the first. I set to work diligently at once on the tasks given me, and was rewarded by the approving remarks of Mr Janrin and Mr Thursby.
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