With a dramatic gesture, as one would say, "I am here!" he pushed back his Panama hat. With an unsteady finger he pointed, as it was drawn dripping across the deck, at the stern hawser.
"You see that rope?" he demanded. "Soon as that rope hit the water I knocked off work. S'long as you was in Valencia—me, on the job. Now, you can't go back, I can't go back. Why further dissim'lation? Who am I?"
His condition seemed to preclude the possibility of his knowing who he was, so I told him.
He sneered as I have seen men sneer only in melodrama.
"Oh, of course," he muttered. "Oh, of course."
He lurched toward me indignantly.
"You know perfec'ly well Jones is not my name. You know perfec'ly well who I am."
"My dear sir," I said, "I don't know anything about you, except that you are a damned nuisance."
He swayed from me, pained and surprised. Apparently he was upon an outbreak of tears.
"Proud," he murmured, "and haughty. Proud and haughty to the last."