"No. No. They are not good. I'll never be able to squeeze them. Never.
I've been saying for years I would, but I give it up. I never really
believed I could. Don't reckon on that, Heyst. I have robbed you."

Poor Morrison actually laid his head on the cabin table, and remained
in that crushed attitude while Heyst talked to him soothingly with the
utmost courtesy. The Swede was as much distressed as Morrison; for he
understood the other's feelings perfectly. No decent feeling was ever
scorned by Heyst. But he was incapable of outward cordiality of manner,
and he felt acutely his defect. Consummate politeness is not the right
tonic for an emotional collapse. They must have had, both of them, a
fairly painful time of it in the cabin of the brig. In the end Morrison,
casting desperately for an idea in the blackness of his despondency,
hit upon the notion of inviting Heyst to travel with him in his brig and
have a share in his trading ventures up to the amount of his loan.

It is characteristic of Heyst's unattached, floating existence that he
was in a position to accept this proposal. There is no reason to think
that he wanted particularly just then to go poking aboard the brig into
all the holes and corners of the Archipelago where Morrison picked up
most of his trade. Far from it; but he would have consented to almost
any arrangement in order to put an end to the harrowing scene in the
cabin. There was at once a great transformation act: Morrison raising
his diminished head, and sticking the glass in his eye to looked
affectionately at Heyst, a bottle being uncorked, and so on. It was
agreed that nothing should be said to anyone of this transaction.
Morrison, you understand, was not proud of the episode, and he was
afraid of being unmercifully chaffed.

"An old bird like me! To let myself be trapped by those damned