He is thickset, heavy,
bulky in the girth, flat-footed, iron-handed, slow to move. He has a
white beard like a friar, and wears a worsted cap. His skin, having lost
at last the tan of thirty years, is like the rough side of light brown
sole leather--a sort of yellowish, grey, dead-leaf colour. He is very
deaf and therefore generally very silent. He has been boatswain on board
of many a good ship and there are few ports from Batum to San Francisco
where he has not cast anchor.
The boys saw him from a long way off, and their courage rose. He often
came to Verbicaro to buy wine and had known their father, and knew them.
He would certainly give them a piece of bread. As he saw them coming
his quiet eyes watched them, and followed them as they came up the
beach. But he did not turn his head, nor move hand or foot, even when
they were close to him. He looked so solid and determined to stand still
where he was, in the door of his shop, that you might have taken him for
an enormous lay figure of a man, made of carved oak and dressed up for a
sign to his own business. The two lads touched their ragged woollen caps
and stood looking at him, wondering whether he would ever move.
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