leather belt with a brass buckle and hanger, and huge sea-boots
completed a costume singularly suggestive of his occupation in
life. His face was round and broad, like that of a cat, and a
complexion stained, by constant exposure to the sun and wind, to
a color of newly polished mahogany. But a countenance which
otherwise might have been humorous, in this case was rendered
singularly repulsive by the fact that his nose had been broken so
flat to his face that all that remained to distinguish that
feature were two circular orifices where the nostrils should have
been. His eyes were by no means so sinister as the rest of his
visage, being of a light-gray color and exceedingly
vivacious--even good-natured in the merry restlessness of their
glance--albeit they were well-nigh hidden beneath a black bush of
overhanging eyebrows. When he spoke, his voice was so deep and
resonant that it was as though it issued from a barrel rather
than from the breast of a human being.

"How now, my hearty!" cried he, in stentorian tones, so loud that
they seemed to stun the tensely drawn drums of our hero's ears.
"How now, my hearty! What's to-do here? Who is shooting pistols
at this hour of the night?" Then, catching sight of the figures
lying in a huddle upon the floor, his great, thick lips parted
into a gape of wonder and his gray eyes rolled in his head like
two balls, so that what with his flat face and the round holes of
his nostrils he presented an appearance which, under other
circumstances, would have been at once ludicrous and grotesque.

"By the blood!" cried he, "to be sure it is murder that has
happened here."