“It’s aboot mysel’ I meant to tel ye, if ye’ll no’ be so clever wi’ contradictin’, and I say once more—(here he glowered into space, as though he saw something a long way off)—I was thinking about a man I met wi’ in about eighty-two degrees o’ latitude, when I was out wi’ Captain Parry on the third expedition of the Hecla, in 1827, at which time I was no more than forty year old.”
“Forty in 1827!” said the doctor. “Why, how old do you make yourself?”
“I’ll no mak’ mysel’ any age; but let us—no’ to be particular to a year or so—put me down at seventy-six or seventy-eight.”
“Ho! ho! ho!” laughed Scudds. “Why, man, you’re not above fifty.”
“Weel, if ye maun tell my story yersels—maybe ye’ll gi’e me leave to turn in, or light my pipe. I’ll no’ speak if ye’ve no wish to hear; but now I mind that I’m eighty-four year old last Thursday was a week, for I was four-and-twenty when I first had ten years’ sleep at Slievochan.”
The man’s eyes were fixed on space, as though he saw all that he was about to narrate going on in some strange way in the dim distance; and except an occasional grunt of interest, a deep-drawn breath, or the refilling and relighting of a pipe, all was still as he went on.