Are you hungry ?" "A little." "Will you come with me, in that brig there ?" The boy moved without a word towards the boat and scrambled into the bows.
"Knows his place," muttered 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.