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.