He breathed regularly.
Every time he turned the book in his enormous and blackened hands the
muscles of his big white arms rolled slightly under the smooth skin.
Hidden by the white moustache, his lips, stained with tobacco-juice that
trickled down the long beard, moved in inward whisper. His bleared eyes
gazed fixedly from behind the glitter of black-rimmed glasses. Opposite
to him, and on a level with his face, the ship's cat sat on the barrel
of the windlass in the pose of a crouching chimera, blinking its green
eyes at its old friend. It seemed to meditate a leap on to the old man's
lap over the bent back of the ordinary seaman who sat at Singleton's
feet. Young Charley was lean and long-necked. The ridge of his
backbone made a chain of small hills under the old shirt. His face of a
street-boy--a face precocious, sagacious, and ironic, with deep downward
folds on each side of the thin, wide mouth--hung low over his bony
knees. He was learning to make a lanyard knot with a bit of an old
rope. Small drops of perspiration stood out on his bulging forehead; he
sniffed strongly from time to time, glancing out of the corners of
his restless eyes at the old seaman, who took no notice of the puzzled
youngster muttering at his work.
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