Chapter XXIV
In which I Get Acquainted With Captain Adoniram Tugg
The face I finally saw at the top of that beanpole figure was as long as the moral law. Such a lank, cadaverous visage I don’t think I had ever seen before. The man was a human lath.
And so bronzed and toughened was his hide that he looked to be made out of sole-leather. His mouth was a grim, post-box slit; his nose was a high beak with such a hump on it that I thought it had been broken; but his eyes were human—gray-blue, twinkling with innumerable humorous wrinkles at the outer corners.
“By the e-tar-nal snakes!” he ejaculated when I had tipped back my head so that he could really see my face. “You ain’t the Professor at all! Why, you’re a boy!”
“I am not your friend, the Professor,” I admitted.
“And the voice!” he muttered, staring down at me. “It’s his voice. I ain’t put in my winters with him this last dozen years and more to be mistook in his voice. Say, boy, who be you?”
“Clint Webb is my name,” I replied.
“Where do you hail from?”