Chapter 28

All this time he had been feeling the stuff of my jacket, smoothing my hands, looking at my boots, and generally, in the intervals of his speech, showing a childish pleasure in the presence of a fellow creature. But at my last words he perked up into a kind of startled slyness. “If ever you can get aboard again, says you?” he repeated. “Why, now, who’s to hinder you?” “Not you, I know,” was my reply. “And right you was,” he cried. “Now you--what do you call yourself, mate?” “Jim,” I told him. “Jim, Jim,” says he, q…