When Dave had pocketed this he leaned back and smiled with that sort of ruthless content that a beast of prey feels when he licks his chops after having enjoyed a meal from his lawful prey.
Tom's losses were relatively great; it was a kind of small ruin that had suddenly overtaken him. A month of writing, if he had it to do, would not have replaced the money, nor was his a nature that could easily brook defeat. The very courage and self-reliance that would have stood him in admirable stead in another kind of difficulty, and that in other circumstances would have been accounted a virtue, were a snare to him now.
"Look here, Dave," he said, with a voice choked by mortification, "give me a chance to win a little of that back," and he laid his pocket-knife on the table.
"Tom, you'd better quit," said three or four voices at once. But Dave rather eagerly laid a half-dollar by Tom's knife and won the knife. He liked this chance to give a certain completeness to the job. Then Tom laid out his silk handkerchief, which he also lost—for the games all went one way now.
"Come, Tom, hold on now," said the chorus.
But Tom was in the torment of perdition. He glared at those who advised him to desist. Then, in a mixture of stupor and desperation, he placed his hat on the board against a dollar and lost that; then he stripped the coat from his back and lost it, and at last his boots went the same way. When these were gone, having nothing further to wager without consigning himself to aboriginal nakedness, he sat in a kind of daze, his eyes looking swollen and bloodshot with excitement.
"Come, Dave," said Lockwood, "give him back his clothes. You've won enough without taking the clothes off his back."
"That's all you know about it," said Dave, who noted every token of Tom's suffering as an additional element in his triumph. "That may be your Illinois way, but that isn't the way we play in New Orleans. Winnings is winnings where I learnt the game." And he proceeded to lay Tom's things in a neat pile convenient for transportation.
"Aw! come now, Dave," said one and another, "'t a'n't the fair thing to send a fellow home to his folks barefooted and in his shirt-sleeves."
But Dave smiled in supercilious contempt at this provincial view of things, and cited the usages of the superior circles to which he had gained admission.