in Brand, smiling
in his peculiar manner. "Well, what next?"

"Why, sir, the next mornin' Belize Paul--as is part doctor, you
know--said as how my leg was to come off below the knee, and arter
givin' me a sip or two o' rum--"

"Bottle," interjected the captain, twisting the beak of his nose in a
puff of smoke.

"--Rum, why, smash my brains, sir, if he didn't hack it off with a
wood-saw!"

"Well, what next?"

"Then, sir, ye see, we run the schooner down Cape Cruz, where we kept
werry snug and quiet till sich times as the old one-eyed Diego judged
the coast clear to return to head-quarters."

"Well, what then?"

"That's all, Captain Brand!" concluded the narrator his garbled yarn, as
he again had recourse to scratching the door-mat on his head, and cast a
thirsty look at the brandy-flask.

"That's all, is it?" hissed the man with the iron jaws, in a tone of
concentrated passion, as he sprang with a single bound from the settee,
and clutched Master Gibbs with both hands around his hairy throat until
his face turned livid purple and his eyes started from the sockets.
"That's all, is it, you drunken beast? That's all you have to tell after
idling away the summer, losing anchors and boats, and more than half my
crew, and bringing a hornet's nest down about our ears! That's all, is
it? And what would you say, now, if I should order the doctor to cut off
your other leg close behind your ears, you beast?"

In the last stages of suffocation, the man was hurled on his back to the
floor, and there lay, bleeding a torrent from his mouth and nose. His
superior stood over him for a moment and put his hand in his trowsers
pocket for a pistol, and then he glanced rapidly at the green rope
squirming from the beams above; but, changing his purpose apparently, he
strode back to the settee and shouted "Babette!"

Presently the door opened from the passage leading to the kitchen, and
there appeared a large, powerfully-made negro-woman, with her arms
akimbo, and a pair of bloodshot eyes gleaming from beneath a striped
Madras turban wound round her head.

"Babette!" repeated the captain, resuming his seat and his habitual
polite air and voice, "serve out a barrel of Bordeaux and a beaker of
old Antigua rum to the 'Centipede's' crew to drink my health; and I say,
my beauty! have a pig or two killed; tell the boatswain to haul the
seine, and have a good supper for all hands to-night. And, Baba"--he
went on as if he had just though