Claggett Chew possessed a face and bearing not easily forgotten. A
giant of a man, standing well over six feet three, he stood bareheaded
in the morning sun. Contrary to the custom of the time, he wore no
pigtail at his neck, nor even hair caught back, tied with a bow.
Claggett Chew's head was shaved so close that the pale skin of his
skull showed through the peppery stubble, making him seem bald. Below
the bare skull, as if in counterbalance, his black eyebrows started
out, tangled and thickly black, and under them, as out of a rocky
cave, his small pale eyes blinked like cornered foxes in their dens.
His nose, overlarge to start with, had at some time in his life been
broken, and its crooked shape leaned to the right as if still bending
beneath the blow that had battered it.
[Illustration]
A long untrimmed mustache shadowed his mouth, and stray hairs caught
inside his lips when he opened and closed them. His lips, like his
eyes, were pale, and his skin sickly as that of a man who sees but
little of the light. His cheeks and chin were stubbly, like his
head; his beard seemed more reluctant than half grown. His whole
appearance, in his sallow yellow vest, gun-gray coat and breeches and
canary-colored stockings, was one of mingled power and weakness;
strength joined with an unhealthy habit of never being in the sun, and
a cruelty best enjoyed when he knew that he could win.
His cold eyes pinned Chris with their gaze as if the boy were a
butterfly transfixed by a pin. His thin, pallid lips curled with
disdain and yet, Chris thought, uneasiness perhaps, as he eyed the two
lads and the little knot of men. One strong, too white hand held a
whip, its long leather tail ending like a scorpion's sting, in a
length of wire. He held the five feet of the whip loosely caught in
his hand against the plaited leather handle, and Chris had an icy
sensation as he looked at it that it was never far from the large
white hand of Claggett Chew.
A little behind Claggett Chew, examining the scene through a pair of
jeweled lorgnettes, stood an even weirder figure.
"Osterbridge Hawsey," whispered Ned Cilley, as if to himself, as he
followed the direction of Chris's eyes.
Osterbridge Hawsey, younger than Claggett Chew by twenty years to
Claggett's forty, was dressed in the height of the French mode.
Anything more out of place on the dirty swarming docks of Georgetown
could scarcely have been imagined. His three-cornered hat was rakishly
set at an angle on his fair hair, which was meticulously rolled in
curls above his ears, and the curls were caught at his neck with a
black velvet ribbon. Beside Claggett Chew's offensive bare skull, the
hat, in its delicate blue velvet, silver braid, and airy rim of
ostrich feathers, was ludicrous. Osterbridge Hawsey's costume was of a
piece with the hat, for his coat was of fine blue velvet of too pale
a shade for any use outside a drawing room. It, too, was edged in
silver braid, and its owner, holding a lorgnette with his right hand,
with his left pushed back the velvet folds to display the delicacy of
his flower-embroidered waistcoat. Satin knee breeches, a cascade of
fine lace at his throat, and lace falling gracefully over his small
well-kept hands made up the picture. As Chris looked at him,
fascinated and repelled, he noticed that the young man wore a patch in
the shape of a crescent moon, on his left cheek.
Chris, who had been not a little overawed at seeing Claggett Chew,
could not restrain himself at the sight of this fop. The touch of fear
he had felt, looking into the pale expressionless eyes of Mr. Wicker's
enemy, found relief and release in an uncontrollable burst of laughter
when from his pocket Osterbridge Hawsey drew a tiny bottle of smelling
salts and held it delicately to his nose.
Chris's young laughter rose in peal after peal. Amos's warmer, quicker
laugh joined in, and in a second, laughter had spread to the group of
seamen who doubled up, convulsed, fell on one another's shoulders as
they wiped their eyes, and slapped their hard thighs with their
roughened hands.
The pair that so amused the rest, Claggett Chew and his fine friend, had
stopped some ten feet away at the first sound of mirth. Then into
Claggett Chew's gray-white face came astonishment, for he was used to
creating many impressions--fear, hatred, or cringing obsequiousness--but
never before had he or any of his friends been laughed at. Furthermore,
he, the dreaded Claggett Chew, and his gaudy friend Osterbridge Hawsey,
were held as being of so little account that a boy dared to laugh at
them!
[Illustration]
After a surge of deep ugly red to his head, Claggett Chew's face
became whiter than before, and his eyes were murderous.
"Oh, Claggett, they seem to be laughing at me!" Osterbridge Hawsey
whined in a high-pitched voice.
Unfortunately, at this moment Chris, forgetting caution in the grip of
his laughter, held on to Amos shouting feebly: "He's got a patch on
his cheek! What do you know--a beauty patch!"
The derision in his voice, in spite of his laughter, was unmistakable,
but before he could so much as draw another breath, he heard Claggett
Chew's voice for the first time.
"So--you ill-found ugly twirp! You idiot whippersnapper! Let me give
you one to match!"
And quicker than the eye could follow, the whip flicked out, and with
a cutting sting, lashed Chris's cheek. The cut, from the metal wire,
was deep, almost to Chris's jawbone; but he did not feel the hurt as
much as he realized--his laughter gone--that Claggett Chew was now his
deadly enemy.
"Next time," came Claggett Chew's sneering voice, "I shall take an
_eye_ from you, my laughing boy, and see if that amuses _us_ as well!"
And turning on his heel, followed by the sauntering, giggling fop, the
pair picked their way along the wharf and disappeared.
It was only then, looking around at the sobered, silent sailors, Chris
remembered that Zachary Heigh was the only one who had not laughed.