*

At this Old Joe seems to be smitten with a sudden frenzy. I have never
seen anything like it. After a preliminary canter in the laughing line
he suddenly makes taut his body; his eyes bulge from his head; his face
becomes crimson and his nose blue; then, with his mouth open, while he
hisses like a steam-saw and roars like a bull and sends the most
extraordinary imitation of throat-cutting spluttering wetly from his
distended lips, he waves his right arm madly and frantically in the air,
makes imaginary stabs in front of him, draws imaginary knives across his
throat, and brings down the butt ends of imaginary carbines on the
supposititious heads of the swarthy crew unkindly resurrected to be
slain again.

It is plain that the poor old paralysed fellow is lost to the Present.
He is back in the Past--or in one of his novelettes; and in front of
him, begging for mercy, as he slits their throats, or cracks open their
skulls, are, indeed, hundreds of real and living men. His acting is
superb. It is only made comical by the hanging legs, the fixture of the
body to the seat of the chair, and the furious spluttering of his
frenzied mouth.

When he has quite finished, thoroughly exhausted, he leans back in his
chair, sticks his pipe into his face, strikes a match with his shaking
hands, and covers his laughing face in a wreath of tobacco-smoke.

"Arst him," whispers Mr. Wells, "how many he killed? Go on; you arst
him."

* * * * *

So you lean across to Old Joe, who shoots forward to meet your lips
half-way with his left ear, and you calmly, and without dread or horror,
ask the gurgling and chuckling veteran how many men he has killed.

As soon as he has caught your question he bursts out laughing, flings
himself suddenly back, and exclaims, with a splutter: "How many ha' I
killed? How many? I couldn't say. Too many on 'em. Hundreds! Hundreds!
Hundreds of 'em!" Back goes the pipe, and, wreathed in proud smiles, his
shoulders twitching, his hands never still for a moment, he sits square
back in his chair and looks at you proudly, as much as to say:

"Ain't I a devil of a feller? Ain't I a monster? Ho, I've had a terrible
life. You just arst me another!"

Well, I know not how true is the story told by Old Joe of his own
wickedness.

But, however this may be--and it is not the province of Old Joe's
humble historian to speculate--let us be content with the picture of
these two old pens