110050 And that’s the sort of worthless work I do.
110051 Pretend to be buying palm oil and all the time looking for new pearl fisheries.
110052 Next they’ll be wanting me to find a new virgin continent for them.
110053 This isn’t a job for an honest captain in the merchant navy.
110054 Captain J. van Toch isn’t some cursed adventurer, no.
110055 And on he would go; the sea is wide and the ocean of time has no limits; spit in the sea, my friend, and it will not return, berate your destiny and you will never change it; and so on through many preparations and circumstances until we finally arrive at the point when J. van Toch, captain of the Dutch vessel, Kandong Bandoeng, will sigh and climb down into the boat for the trip to Tana Masa where he will negotiate with the drunken half-cast of Cubanese and Portuguese extraction about certain business matters.
110056 “Sorry, Captain,” the half-cast of Cubanese and Portuguese extraction finally said, “but here on Tana Masa there aren’t any oysters.
110057 These filthy Bataks,” he would inform him with boundless disgust, “will even eat the jellyfish; there are more of them in the water than on the land, the women here smell of fish, you cannot imagine what it is like — what was I saying?
110058 Ah, yes, you were asking about women.”
110059 “And is there not even any stretch of coastline round here,” the captain asked, “where these Bataks don’t go in the water?”
110060 The half-cast of Cubanese and Portuguese shook his head.
110061 “There is not.
110062 Unless you count Devil Bay, but that would not interest you.”