This loquacity was sometimes
repeated, but more often Davenport's way was of silence. His apathy, or
it might have been abstraction, usually wore the outer look of
dreaminess.
"Your friend seems to go about in a trance," Barry Tompkins said of him
one day, after a chance meeting in which Larcher had made the two
acquainted.
This was a near enough description of the man as he accompanied Larcher
to a part of the riverfront not far from the Brooklyn Bridge, on the
afternoon at which we have arrived. The two were walking along a squalid
street lined on one side with old brick houses containing junk-shops,
shipping offices, liquor saloons, sailors' hotels, and all the various
establishments that sea-folk use. On the other side were the wharves,
with a throng of vessels moored, and glimpses of craft on the broad
river.
"Here we are," said Larcher, who as he walked had been referring to a
pocket map of the city. The two men came to a stop, and Davenport took
from a portfolio an old print of the early nineteenth century,
representing part of the river front. Silently they compared this with
the scene around them, Larcher smiling at the difference. Davenport then
looked up at the house before which they stood. There was a saloon on
the ground floor, with a miniature ship and some shells among the bottles
in the window.
"If I could get permission to make a sketch from one of those windows up
there," said Davenport, glancing at the first story over the saloon.
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