The coffee was sold at Antwerp on the way home for $183.75, and Mr.Tucker's handsome profit on the adventure was therefore $93.56, or more than one hundred per cent.
It was all a grand adventure, in fact, and the word was aptly chosen to fit this ocean trade.

The merchant freighted his ship and sent her out to vanish from his ken for months and months of waiting, with the greater part of his savings, perhaps, in goods and specie beneath her hatches.

No cable messages kept him in touch with her nor were there frequent letters from the master.

Not until her signal was displayed by the fluttering flags of the headland station at the harbor mouth could he know whether he had gained or lost a fortune.

The spirit of such merchants was admirably typified in the last venture of Elias Hasket Derby in 1798, when unofficial war existed between the United States and France.
American ships were everywhere seeking refuge from the privateers under the tricolor, which fairly ran amuck in the routes of trade.