 Lingard to himself as he stepped heavily into
the stern sheets and took up the yoke lines. »Give way there.«
    The Malay boat crew lay back together, and the gig sprang away from the quay
heading towards the brig's riding light.
    Such was the beginning of Willems' career.
    Lingard learned in half an hour all that there was of Willems' commonplace
story. Father outdoor clerk of some ship-broker in Rotterdam; mother dead. The
boy quick in learning, but idle in school. The straitened circumstances in the
house filled with small brothers and sisters, sufficiently clothed and fed but
otherwise running wild, while the disconsolate widower tramped about all day in
a shabby overcoat and imperfect boots on the muddy quays, and in the evening
piloted wearily the half-intoxicated foreign skippers amongst the places of
cheap delights, returning home late, sick with too much smoking and drinking -
for company's sake - with these men, who expected such attentions in the way of
business. Then the offer of the good-natured captain of Kosmopoliet IV., who was
pleased to do something for the patient and obliging fellow; young Willems'
great joy, his still greater disappointment with the sea that looked so charming
from afar, but proved so hard and exacting on closer acquaintance - and then
this running away by a sudden impulse. The boy was hopelessly at variance with
the spirit of the sea. He had an instinctive contempt for the honest simplicity
of that work which led to nothing he cared for. Lingard soon found this out. He
offered to send him home in an English ship, but the boy begged hard to be
permitted to remain. He wrote a beautiful hand, became soon perfect in English,
was quick at figures; and Lingard made him useful in that way. As he grew older
his trading instincts developed themselves astonishingly, and Lingard left him
often to trade in one island or another while he, himself, made an intermediate
trip to some out-of-the-way place. On Willems expressing a wish to that effect,
Lingard let him enter Hudig's service. He felt a little sore at that abandonment
because he had attached himself, in a way, to his protégé. Still he was proud of
him, and spoke up for him loyally. At first it was, »Smart boy that - never make
a seaman though.« Then when Willems was helping in the trading he referred to
him as »that clever young fellow.« Later when Willems became the confidential
agent of Hudig, employed in many a delicate affair, the simple-
