“Yes. As you might say. One of the things he taught was—— Well. You were at one yourself. I don’t think he could have learned you much.”
“Don’t you? Could he have learned me (as you call it) that the reason you’ve not discharged your cargo here is that you’re going to try to trade along the Main?”
“Ned Davis knows a lot, it seems.”
“Don’t be so confounded smart and hippy. See? I know all your plans. I know all you can do, and all you’re going to try to do. And I know exactly where you’ll go wrong.”
“Then we shan’t have the trouble of telling you.”
“What d’you say to going up the river after Springer’s little city? Eh? There might be something in that.”
“I met a power of clever men in my time,” said Cammock. “I don’t say men of learning and that. I mean clever fellers. I been up rivers with ’em.”
“Looking for cities?”
“Cities sometimes. Sometimes it was gold mines. Then again it’d be Indians. Boys to spear fish and that. Or perhaps it was only a snatching-raid. The clever fellers was never any good at it. But, hear ’em talk. My.”
“I gather your intellect is trying to express the fact that you dislike me. I think I trace so much. I see your brain floundering towards it.”