we drew near the topgallant poop there sounded in my ears a noise like
a tempest, which I soon became aware was a man swearing with a prodigious
vehemence in a fog-horn of a voice. "Sdeath and wounds! Where is that
dog-fish of a Cockle? Damn his entrails, and he is not come soon, I'll
mast-head him naked, by the seven holy spritsails!" And much more and
worse to the same tune until we passed the door and stood before him,
when he let out an oath like the death-cry of a monster.

He was a short, lean man with a leathery face and long, black ropy hair,
and beady black eyes that caught the light like a cat's. His looks,
indeed, would have scared a timid person into a fit; but I resolved I
would die rather than show the fear with which he inspired me. He was
dressed in an old navy uniform with dirty lace. His cabin was bare
enough, being scattered about with pistols and muskets and cutlasses,
with a ragged pallet in one corner, and he sat behind an oaken table
covered with greasy charts and spilled liquor and tobacco.

"So ho, you are risen from the dead, are you, my fine buck?
Mr. What-do-they-call-you?" cried the captain, with a word as foul as
any he had yet uttered. "By the Lord, you shall pay for running my bosun
through!"

"And by the Lord, Captain What's-your-name," I cried back, for the rum I
had taken had heated me, "you and your fellow-rascals shall pay in blood
for this villanous injury!"

Griggs got to his feet and seized his hanger, his face like livid marble
seamed with blue. And from force of habit I made motion for my sword, to
make the shameful discovery that I was clothed from head to foot in
linsey-woolsey.

"G-d---my soul," he roared, "if I don't slit you like a herring!
The devil burn me to a cinder if I don't give your guts to the sharks!"
And he made at me in such a fury that I would certainly have been cut to
pieces had I not grasped a cutlass and parried his blow, Cockle looking
on with his jaw dropped like a peak without haulyards. With a stroke of
my weapon I disarmed Captain Griggs, his sword flying through the cabin
window. For I made up my mind I would better die fighting than expire at
a hideous torture, which I doubted not he would inflict, and so I took up
a posture of defence, with one eye on the mate; despite the kind offices
of the latter below I knew not whether he were disposed to befriend me
before the captain. What was my astonishment, therefore, to behold
Griggs's truculent man