I rubbed my eyes and looked around.
The door and stairway filled one side of the room. There were two
wooden benches and a pile of earthen and tin ware on one of them. The
hammocks hung between the windows, and in one of them lay Craney,
looking like mouldy cheese, for his hair, eyebrows, and complexion
were yellowish by nature, and he was some spotted at that time.
Beyond the door was a banana tree, with ten-foot leaves, and a
little black monkey loping around under it, sort of indifferent.
Beyond the banana tree came thick woods. A woman came out of them
with a basket on her head, up the path to the tower. The monkey
yelped and went up the banana tree. "Dios!" says the woman, when she
came to the door, and she put down the basket and ran. The keeper
came down the stone stairs and ran silently after her. The little
black monkey dropped from his tree and loped after the keeper, and
the woods swallowed them all. A sea-breeze was blowing into the
tower, and below I could hear the pound of the surf. Craney slept as
innocent as if he'd been fresh cheese, and I felt better.
Then the keeper came back with the woman, who appeared to be a
scared Indian and screeched some.
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