The man’s head and shoulders emerged above the deck, over which were scattered various tools of his trade and a few pieces of machinery.  He was doing some repairs to the engines.  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.  Amphibious—­see?  There’s nothing else amphibious living on the island except crocodiles; so he must belong to the species—­eh?  But in reality he’s nothing less than un citoyen anarchiste de Barcelone.”

“A citizen anarchist from Barcelona?” I repeated, stupidly, looking down at the man.  He had turned to his work in the engine-well of the launch and presented his bowed back to us.  In that attitude I heard him protest, very audibly: 

“I do not even know Spanish.”

“Hey?  What?  You dare to deny you come from over there?” the accomplished manager was down on him truculently.

At this the man straightened himself up, dropping a spanner he had been using, and faced us; but he trembled in all his limbs.

“I deny nothing, nothing, nothing!” he said, excitedly.

He picked up the spanner and went to work again without paying any further attention to us.  After looking at him for a minute or so, we went away.

“Is he really an anarchist?” I asked, when out of ear-shot.

“I don’t care a hang what he is,” answered the humorous official of the B. O. S. Co.  “I gave him the name because it suited me to label him in that way, It’s good for the company.”

“For the company!” I exclaimed, stopping short.

“Aha!” he triumphed, tilting up his hairless pug face and straddling his thin, long legs.  “That surprises you.  I am bound to do my best for my company.  They have enormous expenses.  Why—­our agent in Horta tells me they spend fifty thousand pounds every year in advertising all over the world!  One can’t be too economical in working the show.  Well, just you listen.  When I took charge here the estate had no steam-launch.