He
was not a large man, nor commanding to look upon. His eyes were too mild
for that--save when, perhaps, he grew excited in relating one of his
interminable stories about Cap'n Amazon.
Cap'n Amazon Silt, it seemed, had been everything on sea and land that a
mariner could be. No romance of the sea, or sea-going, was too
remarkable to be capped by a tale of one of Cap'n Amazon's experiences.
Some of these stories of wild and remarkable happenings, the storekeeper
had told over and over again until they were threadbare.
Cap'n Abe's brown, gray-streaked beard swept the breast of his blue
jersey. He was seldom seen without a tarpaulin on his head, and this had
made his crown as bare and polished as a shark's tooth. Under the bulk
of his jersey he might have been either thin or deep-chested, for the
observer could not easily judge. And nobody ever saw the storekeeper's
sleeves rolled up or the throat-latch of his shirt open.
Despite the fact that he held a thriving trade in his store on the Shell
Road (especially during the summer season) Cap'n Abe lived emphatically a
lonely life.
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