Van Rijn POV II

Poul Anderson, "Margin of Profit" IN Anderson, The Technic Civilization: The Van Rijn Method, compiled by Hank Davis (New York, 2009), pp. 135-173.

pp. 135-136 are the Introduction to "Margin of Profit" by Hloch of Stormgate Choth in The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

On pp. 137-144, Captain Rafael Torres, Lodgemaster in the Federated Brotherhood of Spacefarers, gains an audience with merchant prince Nicholas van Rijn, owner of the Solar Spice & Liquors Company, in that individual's Djakarta office. We see van Rijn for our first time ever and from Torres' pov:

huge;
two meters high;
more than broad enough to match;
triple chin;
swag belly;
not soft-looking;
glittering rings;
hairy fingers;
brawny wrists;
glittering bracelets;
snuff-soiled lace;
small, close-set, intensely peering black eyes;
large hooked nose;
sloping forehead;
smoking a pipe;
deep voice;
thick accent.

OK. The points to note are:

flamboyant;
wealthy;
not soft;
peering intensely - he will not miss anything;
uncompromisingly individualistic and idiosyncratic.

On pp. 145-146, the omniscient narrator gives the reader an overview of the Polesotechnic League.

On pp. 146-156, van Rijn meets other merchant princes in his Kilimanjaro mansion and this passage is narrated from van Rijn's own pov! But it will require another post.