Tide Marks by H.M. Tomlinson — Read

The warehouse and office of the shipping firm at Macassar whose principal acts as British consul assure a wanderer from home that his affairs may be there considered of consequence. I noticed that office with approval before I knew it was under my flag. It appeared to be a solid structure of the Portuguese occupation, and its calm was cloistral. Along the hot street it cooled the sidewalk with a roofed colonnade. The white columns, in that sun, were shafts of light, and under them the open doors of the warehouse admitted to warm gloom and the smell of spices. I stepped into the shadows, where I could just make out old beams and a vista of bales, and snuffed it up. I thought this must be the smell of Macassar. Perhaps smelling it is as good a way of getting the history of a place as any other. When I called there for my letters, respectfully waiting for attention in the light of an upper story where clerks in white linen were silent over great leather volumes, presently I found a difficulty in raising my voice above a whisper in that immemorial hush. A clerk approached, listened to me, and vanished without a word. Not important enough to be noticed? But presently I saw him beckoning, in a side aisle, like a grave priest to an initiate, and I followed him past a motionless guardian of the sanctuary-that figure might have been a statue, or it might have been only the Malay equivalent of a hall porter-to an inner room, and he left me. I was alone there, with a matured table on which documents were orderly, and two chairs. I sank into the leathern deep of one, and looked at Chinese almanacs on the wall. I like Chinese almanacs.

They are always decorated with figures of Chinese girls in embroidered tunics and trousers. Every one of these girls has a black fringe, and her expression beyond doubt is exactly what would lead Chinese soldiers to adorn their dugouts with national almanacs. That is what interests me; I try to find the angle where a Chinaman would stand to admire something different from what I see at mine. There were two large maps of Celebes, and they made that great island greater, than ever with blank spaces which had no names. On a sideboard were many samples of mace, gums, and tortoise shell. There was a chart of the East Indies, and advertisements of ships and their sailing dates. I could have been contented there for a long time. The feeling came over me that I should like to sit at that table and play with ships and produce. But when the proprietor entered it was certain that there was a game at which I should be badly beaten. There could be no doubt he knew more about it. He knew more of a good many things; but his bearing gave me the easy notion that his valuable time was for me to spend as I chose. He appeared to understand Europe better than most Europeans, and though it would have been easy for me to have disagreed with him about Mr. Lloyd George, I did not care to do so. I had not brought the Welsh mountains with me and did not feel equal to going back for them. There were my letters; and outside afterward it occurred to me, when I remembered what is so often written of British consuls, that occasionally there may be bad travelers as well as unfortunate consuls.