"'If he has a gallon of oil or a pound of fish,' said I, 'fetch him aboard.'
"'Queer he may look,' said I, 'and queer he may be, but his fish will be first cousins to the ones in the hold, and I'll barter for them.'
"With that the skipper put off in the punt to fetch the customer; but when he drew near shore he lay on his oars, something puzzled, I'm thinking, for the customer was dancing a hornpipe on a flat rock at the water's edge, by the first light of the moon.
"'Have you got a fish t' trade?' said the skipper.
"'Good-evenin', skipper, sir,' said the queer customer, after a last kick and flourish. 'I've a quintal or two an' a cask o' oil that I'm wantin' bad t' trade away.'
"He was rational as you please; so the skipper was thrown off his guard, took him aboard, and pulled out.
"'Hut!' said the man. 'That's nothin' at all. When the moon's full an' high, sir, I dances over the waves; an' when they's a gale blowin' I goes aloft t' the clouds an' shakes a foot up there.'
"'Do you, now?' said the skipper, not knowing whether to take this in joke or earnest.
"'Believe _me_, sir,' said the man, with the gravest of faces, 'I'm a wonderful dancer.'
"I was on deck when they came aboard. It was then dusk. I noticed nothing out of the ordinary in my customer's appearance. He was a large, big-boned man, well supplied with fat and muscle, and capable, as I thought at the moment, of enduring all the toil and hardship to which the men of that coast are exposed. The skipper handed him over to me without a word of warning, and went below to the forecastle, for the wind was blowing cold and misty."
"Oh, well," the skipper broke in from his place in a bunk, "how could I tell that he was mad?"
"Whatever, Skipper Job," the clerk resumed, with a twinkle in his eye, "I took him into the cabin, and the crew and you were snug enough in the forecastle, where no hail of mine could reach you. It was not until then," he resumed, "when the light of the cabin lamp fell full upon him, that I had a proper appreciation of my customer's size and strength--not until then that I marked the deathly pallour of his face and the strange light in his eyes. He was frowsy, dirty, dressed in ragged moleskin cloth; and he had a habit of looking to right and left and aloft--anywhere, it appeared, but straight in my face--so that I caught no more than a red flash from his eyes from time to time. I felt uneasy, without being able to account to myself for the feeling; so, anxious to be well rid of him, I asked, abruptly, in what I could serve him.