"
Then he read a bit of it aloud, but it didn't go right, for sometimes
he'd trot, as you might say, when he ought to have galloped,
and sometimes he'd gallop when he ought to have trotted, and
sometimes he'd come along at a mixed gait. As a rule, he bumped.
He was no hand at poetry. Nor was he romantic to look at, but thin,
and sinewy, and one-eyed, and some dried up, clean shaven except
for a wisp of greyish whisker on his chin, and always neatly dressed
now. When he'd laugh to himself, the wrinkles would spread around his
eyes, one blind, and the other calm and calculating, and absent-minded.
He'd sit with his cigar tilted up in one corner of his mouth, and his
hat tilted forward, and whittle sticks. He'd talk with anybody, but
mostly with me and Kamelillo, whom he appeared to be asking for
information. Kamelillo knew island dialects about the same as he did
English, but wasn't much for conversation. Craney came one day
with a bundle of charts, and he collected me and Kamelillo in a
corner and spread his charts on the deck. They were old charts.
"Now," he says, "here is the lines of trade."
He had the regular routes all marked on his charts.
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