At the sound of our footsteps
he raised anxiously a grimy face with a pointed chin and a tiny fair
moustache. What could be seen of his delicate features under the black
smudges appeared to me wasted and livid in the greenish shade of the
enormous tree spreading its foliage over the launch moored close to the
bank.
To my great surprise, Harry Gee addressed him as "Crocodile," in
that half-jeering, half-bullying tone which is characteristic of
self-satisfaction in his delectable kind:
"How does the work get on, Crocodile?"
I should have said before that the amiable Harry had picked up French
of a sort somewhere--in some colony or other--and that he pronounced
it with a disagreeable forced precision as though he meant to guy the
language. The man in the launch answered him quickly in a pleasant
voice. His eyes had a liquid softness and his teeth flashed dazzlingly
white between his thin, drooping lips. The manager turned to me, very
cheerful and loud, explaining:
"I call him Crocodile because he lives half in, half out of the creek.
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