ABSTRACT
AFTER a certain period young Northwood was put in charge of a section of the Eurasian clerks, who sat at high desks in a long row at the extreme end of the general office, it being his principal duty to see that they turned out their work correctly and within the given time. He was interested in his dusky colleagues and puzzled by their peculiarities. Some of them went by resounding Spanish, Portuguese or Dutch names, such as Albuquerque, Miranda, da Costa, or Magelhaens, while yet another would call himself Donald Bain, or Gustav Fassman. The history of Malacca accounted for such names as Albuquerque and Magelhaens, but the fact that there still existed a firm in Raffles Square of the style of Bain, McGlashan and Co., and that the offices of Gustav Fassman and Co. were next door, suggested that in the earlier days of the colony a bygone Bain and a departed Fassman had taken unto themselves daughters of the land, of whom certain clerks in Brownlow’s office were the mixed progeny.
