lass return
fare was one pound twelve and six, including three meals each way;
drinks, as the contract was careful to explain, being extra. I was
earning thirty shillings a week at the time as clerk with a firm of
agents in Fenchurch Street. Our business was the purchasing of
articles on commission for customers in India, and I had learned to be
a judge of values. The beaver lined coat he was wearing--for the
evening, although it was late summer, was chilly--must have cost him a
couple of hundred pounds, while his carelessly displayed jewellery he
could easily have pawned for a thousand or more.

I could not help staring at him, and once, as they passed, he returned
my look.

After dinner, as I was leaning with my back against the gunwale on the
starboard side, he came out of the only private cabin that the vessel
boasted, and taking up a position opposite to me, with his legs well
apart and a big cigar between his thick lips, stood coolly regarding
me, as if appraising me.

"Treating yourself to a little holiday on the Continent?" he inquired.

I had not been quite sure before he spoke, but his lisp, though slight,
betrayed the Jew. His features were coarse, almost brutal; but the
restless eyes were so brilliant, the whole face so suggestive of power
and character, that, taking him as a whole, the feeling he inspired was
admiration, tempered by fear. His tone was one of kindly contempt--the
tone of a man accustomed to find most people his inferiors, and too
used to the discovery to be conceited about it.

Behind it was a note of authority that it did not occur to me to
dispute.

"Yes," I answered, adding the information that I had never been abroad
before, and had heard that Antwerp was an interesting town.

"How long have you got?" he asked.

"A fortnight," I told him.

"Like to see a bit more than Antwerp, if you could afford it, wouldn't
you?" he suggested. "Fascinating little country Holland. Just long
enough--a fortnight--to do the whole of it. I'm a Dutchman, a Dutch
Jew."

"You speak English just like an Englishman," I told him. It was
somehow in my mind to please him. I could hardly have explained why.

"And half a dozen other languages equally well," he answered, laughing.
"I left Amsterdam when I was eighteen as steerage passenger in an
emigrant ship. I haven't seen it since."

He closed the cabin door behind him, and, crossing over, laid a strong
hand on my shoulder.

"I will make