But the colonel’s look galvanized him into action, and he was once more the silent, well-oiled, efficient machine of service.
“Let’s move out on the gallery, gentlemen,” Gaitskill suggested after a while. “We’ll find it cooler there.”
As the men passed out, Gaitskill lingered a moment and said:
“That’s all, Vinegar. You are dismissed for the evening.”
Vinegar Atts pulled the doors of the dining-room together, waited a moment until he was sure the men had settled themselves upon the gallery, and then he did a very unusual thing.
Seating himself at the mahogany table in the chair which Captain Manse had occupied, he spread his immense black hands palm-downward upon its shiny surface and with a perfect imitation of Manse’s manner, sat there for five minutes, in ludicrous, pop-eyed expectation, waiting for something to happen!
He looked up at the ceiling, and down to the table. He pushed on the table-top with all his strength. He drew in a breath which seemed to consume all the air in the room, and emitted a sigh like the exhaust of a blast furnace—but all to no avail.
“It cain’t be did widout plenty practice,” he assured himself. “But I ain’t got nothin’ to do all de rest of dis night but kotch on how to make her jigger!”
He went out to his cabin in the rear of the Gaitskill yard and sat down beside a cheap pine table.
When morning dawned he was still sitting there, puffing and blowing, his sweating palms pressed downward upon the table’s rough surface, his credulity unshaken despite his failure, waiting for something to happen!