Aha! Now you remember.

He couldn't, apparently, speak any other European language than English, but he flew the Dutch flag on his prau.
"The other was the Frenchman without hands.

Yes.

The very same we used to know in '79 in Sydney, keeping a little tobacco shop at the lower end of George Street.

You remember the huge carcase hunched up behind the counter, the big white face and the long black hair brushed back off a high forehead like a bard's.