He said her name was Titiaca, and
she would look after us, but otherwise had no culture. Craney woke up
and took a look at things.
"I have already," the keeper says very solemn, "the advantage of
your honourable names. My own is Gaspero Raphael de Avila y Mituas."
He stated it so, and went up the stairs. I dropped one leg out of the
hammock, and I says thoughtful:
"I always had hard luck. They just named me Tom and chucked me."
Titiaca knocked her head on the floor and screeched, but at that
time I didn't see what for. She appeared to think the keeper was
displeased.
It was monotonous lying all day in the tower, seeing only Titiaca,
and now and then the black-cloaked keeper, stiff, silent, and solemn,
and polite. But the days went by, and by-and-by we began to crawl out
and lie in the seaward shadow, and sometimes under the banana tree,
where the little black monkey loped around melancholy. We grew
better. Titiaca gossiped, and told us the keeper was a magician, and
master of the winds, and probably the bestower of rain and sunshine,
and certain his light in the tower was connected underground with one
of the volcanoes, so that he could tap different grades of
earthquakes, graded as "motors, trembloritos, and tremblors,"
according to size.
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