Craney was always a talkative man, liking to open out his point of
view. At first I thought he'd gone lunatic of late, and then again
when he showed me his point of view, I found he hadn't changed so
much, as got more so.
Many nights we sat on deck in the moonlight and with a light breeze
pushing in the sails, for the weather in the main was steady, and
he'd smoke a fat cigar, and look at the little shining clouds. He'd
talk and speculate, sometimes shrewd, and then again it was like a
matter of adding a shipload of pirates to the signs of the zodiac,
and getting the New Jerusalem for a result. By-and-by, I felt that
way myself, as if, supposing you kept on sailing long enough, you
might run down an island full of mixed myths and happy angels. Sure
he was romantic.
"I'm a romantic man, Tommy," he says. "That's my secret. Yes, sir,
Romance, that's me! That's the centre of my circumference, that's the
gravity of my orbit, that's the number of my combination. Visions,
ideals! I'm a man to get up and look for the beyond. I want to
expand! I want to permeate! I want the beyond! Here I am, fifty years
old. I gets up and looks out on to the world. I says: 'J.
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