110025 In Ceylon they’ve got enough pearls piled up to last them for five years, on Formosa they’ve put a ban on gathering them — and so they say to me, Captain van Toch, go and see if you can find somewhere new to gather pearls.
110026 Go on down to those damned little islands, you might find whole bays full of oysters down there …”
110027 The captain pulled out his light-blue handkerchief and blew his nose in contempt.
110028 “Those rats in Europe, they think there’s still something to find down here, something they don’t already know about.
110029 God, what a bunch of fools they are!
110030 Next they’ll be wanting me to look up the Bataks snouts to see if they don’t have them full of pearls.
110031 New pearl fisheries!
110032 I know there’s a new brothel in Padang, but new pearl fisheries?
110033 I know these islands like my trousers, all the way from Ceylon down to that damned Clipperton Island, and if anyone thinks there’s anything new still left to find there that they can make any money out of, well good luck to them.
110034 Thirty years I’ve been sailing these waters, and now these fools think I’m going to discover something new!”
110035 This was a task so insulting it made Captain van Toch gasp.
110036 “Why can’t they send some green kid to find something for them if they want to gape in astonishment; but instead they expect someone to do that who knows the area as well as Captain J. van Toch … Please try and understand this.
110037 In Europe there might still be something left to discover; but here — people only come here to sniff out something they could eat, or rather not even to eat, to find something to buy and sell.
110038 If in all these damned tropics there was still something they could double the price of there’d be three commercial agents standing there waving their snotty handkerchiefs at the ships of seven countries to stop for it.