I was interested. Here was a man, a live man. I was in no hurry to go into the cabin, where I knew Wada was unpacking my things, so I paced up and down the deck with the huge Mr. Pike. Huge he was in all conscience, broad-shouldered, heavy-boned, and, despite the profound stoop of his shoulders, fully six feet in height.
“You are a splendid figure of a man,” I complimented.
“I was, I was,” he muttered sadly, and I caught the whiff of whiskey strong on the air.
I stole a look at his gnarled hands. Any finger would have made three of mine. His wrist would have made three of my wrist.
“How much do you weigh?” I asked.
“Two hundred an’ ten. But in my day, at my best, I tipped the scales close to two-forty.”
“And the Elsinore can’t sail,” I said, returning to the subject which had roused him.
“I’ll take you even, anything from a pound of tobacco to a month’s wages, she won’t make it around in a hundred an’ fifty days,” he answered. “Yet I’ve come round in the old Flyin’ Cloud in eighty-nine days—eighty-nine days, sir, from Sandy Hook to ’Frisco. Sixty men for’ard that was men, an’ eight boys, an’ drive! drive! drive! Three hundred an’ seventy-four miles for a day’s run under t’gallantsails, an’ in the squalls eighteen knots o’ line not enough to time her. Eighty-nine days—never beat, an’ tied once by the old Andrew Jackson nine years afterwards. Them was the days!”
“When did the Andrew Jackson tie her?” I asked, because of the growing suspicion that he was “having” me.