Huge he was in all conscience, broad-shouldered, heavy-boned, and, despite the profound stoop of his shoulders, fully six feet in height.
"You are a splendid figure of a man," I complimented.
"I was, I was," he muttered sadly, and I caught the whiff of whiskey strong on the air.
I stole a look at his gnarled hands.

Any finger would have made three of mine.

His wrist would have made three of my wrist.
"How much do you weigh ?" I asked.
"Two hundred an' ten.

But in my day, at my best, I tipped the scales close to two-forty." "And the _Elsinore_ can't sail," I said, returning to the subject which had roused him.
"I'll take you even, anything from a pound of tobacco to a month's wages, she won't make it around in a hundred an' fifty days," he answered.

"Yet I've come round in the old _Flyin' Cloud_ in eighty-nine days--eighty-nine days, sir, from Sandy Hook to 'Frisco.