good look at the intruder.
He was a man of about forty, with a cadaverous face. But the oddity
of his dress attracted the broker's attention more than his lugubrious
physiognomy. His legs were hid in enormously wide trousers descending
to his knee, where they met long boots of sealskin. A pea-jacket with
exaggerated cuffs, almost as large as the breeches, covered his chest,
and around his waist a monstrous belt, with a buckle like a dentist's
sign, supported two trumpet-mouthed pistols and a curved hanger. He wore
a long queue, which depended half-way down his back. As the firelight
fell on his ingenuous countenance the broker observed with some concern
that this queue was formed entirely of a kind of tobacco, known as
pigtail or twist. Its effect, the broker remarked, was much heightened
when in a moment of thoughtful abstraction the apparition bit off a
portion of it, and rolled it as a quid into the cavernous recesses of
his jaws.
Meanwhile, the nearer splash of oars indicated the approach of the
unseen boat. The broker had barely time to conceal himself behind the
cabin before a number of uncouth-looking figures clambered up the hill
toward the ruined rendezvous. They were dressed like the previous comer,
who, as they passed through the open door, exchanged greetings with
each in antique phraseology, bestowing at the same time some
familiar nickname. Flash-in-the-Pan, Spitter-of-Frogs, Malmsey Butt,
Latheyard-Will, and Mark-the-Pinker, were the few sobriquets the broker
remembered. Whether these titles were given to express some peculiarity
of their owner he could not tell, for a silence followed as they slowly
ranged themselves upon the floor of the cabin in a semicircle around
their cadaverous host.
At length Malmsey Butt, a spherical-bodied man-of-war's-man, with
a rubicund nose, got on his legs somewhat unsteadily, and addressed
himself to the company. They had met that evening, said the speaker, in
accordance with a time-honored custom. This was simply to relieve that
one of their number who for fifty years had kept watch and ward over
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