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boisterous gangway from the collier, he saw young Fleischer, a subaltern expert in dumb insolence, sweat streaking his black body like huge tears, hunched brokenly over the rail and looking wistfully into the cool water as von Muecke shouted on about duty to the fatherland and the inexpressible glory of one shovelling team beating the other shovelling team that was shovelling from the other vessel. With a stumble, Lauterbach sent their coal-sacks, stacked on the rail, flying into the water where the ebb tide began to carry them circling away towards the open sea.
    â€œDon’t just stand there, you clumsy swine!” he screamed, winking – von Muecke on his blind side. “You men, jump in and fetch them back. That’s navy property, that is. Any lost sack gets docked from your pay. Jump to it, lads!”
    With a cheer they dropped shovels and leaped into the sea, knees tucked under their chins, plunging deep. Von Muecke looked on suspiciously. It would take a good fifteen minutes of swimming and diving and laughingly throwing sacks from man to man to get them all back. He was, he felt, very far from being a harsh man.
    In the waist of the ship were the three Chinese washermen, known simply as Boy One, Two and Three, sitting on knotted bundles of laundry and waiting with oriental patience. Lauterbach, it seemed, was the only white devil with whom they would speak.
    â€œWe go Tsingtao, chop-chop. Boom-boom no good. We no die-die dead. Too long no getee dollar.” Their faces were set and blank. Of course, they were wearing their best shirts and trousers and new wooden clogs and clutching straw hats, dressed to leave. Those bundles there were not just washing, then, they were these men’s few treasures. They were talking of life and death but pidjin English turned everything into one of those stupid comic operas the British loved to perform in all their outstations of empire. But this, he knew, could not be rushed, would require long, slow excavation with buttressing at every point like an archaeological dig. He leaned on the rail and settled gently into the discussion.
    â€œWhere Joseph?” Joseph was the fixer, the middleman, the compradore. The only one you could argue with.
    â€œJoseph in Tsingtao. No givee dollar.”
    â€œHow? When?” Lauterbach had negotiated with Joseph for the washermen at the same time as they had dispensed with the coolie stokers. It had been understood that dapper, sharp-faced Joseph was first amongst them, that he was entitled to levy a tithe on their pay and that his personal duties were not to exceed a little light starching.
    â€œHe go pilotman ship, hidee in laundry.”
    â€œI see.” So he had not been on board at all for days. He had taken the advance pay and run. A very smart Chinese, young Joseph, mission-educated of course.
    â€œHow much you wantee?” He said it to each of them in turn, hoping to divide them, one against another. Obligingly, they immediately began to quarrel. He let the babble run its course for a minute or two, then returned to the one who had spoken first. Small, thin, strong muscles on light bones, a sharp, intelligent face.
    â€œOne, how much Joseph say he givee you?” Sloe eyes appraised him cautiously.
    â€œI no One. I Two.”
    â€œAlright Number Two. How much Joseph he payee you?”
    â€œFive dollar.” He told off the sum on fingers red and sore from constant immersion in hot water. He was lying of course. Lauterbach inhaled sharply and shook his head.
    â€œOkay. Four dollar. Number Three getee three dollar. Four getee two dollar.”
    Four? Who the hell was Four? They pointed to the little fat one with the currant-bun face who squirmed and blushed coyly at such unaccustomed prominence. If he was Four, then who the hell was One?
    Two looked at him evenly. “Mr von Muecke, he Number One. Captain call him Number One alltime.”
    â€œThat,” insisted Lauterbach calmly,