A jade-handled cane

The Right Honourable Ibrahim Seedat taps his jade-handled cane against the railing to emphasise a point he has been making consistently, and unreservedly.

‘It is jolly well not right, old boy.’ He tap, tap, taps at the rail. ‘This is highly confounding. You say she does not respond to your most seemly advances?’

I blush. What do I care about the captain’s daughter? Except … ‘Well, it’s just that she seems to take care not to take notice of me.’

‘A great puzzlement indeed!’

It’s no puzzle to me. I'm fifteen and I've met my fair share of her type at school dances. She’s a senseless girl with very little to offer the world, bar, admittedly, a decent, if not handsome, complexion and, I suppose, if I must be honest, a certain grace ... but no more.

‘What you need, dear boy, is something that sets you apart. A jade-handled cane for example. A potent symbol of … well, potency … and elegance. It is an established fact that a gentleman must always carry a cane.'

A dandy he means. I have no interest in subjecting myself to the mockery of the shipmates. I can hear their jeers now. No thank you. My policy will be to ignore the silly, impertinent girl even more than she ignores me. But I play the innocent with him.

‘A cane you say?’

He swishes it with a dramatic flourish. Errol Flynn of the high seas. ‘On guard I say, what!’ Up he jumps, enacting an imagined duel. He strikes, he cuts, and he lashes out.

I laugh, despite myself, but am struck dumb when he staggers back, as if walloped by an invisible sword, into the ample shadow of a giant. Captain Henry J. Burroughs by name, sea dog by appearance, stone-silent Narwhal by nature. He looms. He stares. He frowns. Call me coward, but the man is terrifying. Both RH I Seedat and I retreat in mortified haste.

'A cane,’ the RH I Seedat repeats with a whisper. ‘A jade-handled cane.