"Jimmy," answered Levin, when he was free from the spout, "this gentleman's give me a job. I'm goin' to take him out for tarrapin on the Sound. He's goin' to pay me for it."
"Tarrapin-catchin' on a Sunday ain't no respectable job for a Dennis, nohow," cried Jimmy Phœbus, bluntly; "an' doin' it with a nigger buyer is a fine splurge fur you, by smoke! I can't see where your pride is, Levin, to save my life."
Jack Wonnell, wearing a bell-crown, looked on with timid enjoyment of this plain talk, opening his mouth to grin, shutting it to shudder.
The big stranger, dropping Levin Dennis, strode in his long jack-boots, in which his coarse trousers were stuffed, right to the front of Jimmy Phœbus, and glared at him through his inflamed and unsightly eye. Jimmy met his scowl with a mildness almost amounting to contempt.
"Hark ye!" spoke the stranger, "you have been a picking a quarrel with me all yisterday, an' to-day air a beginnin' of it agin. Do you want to fight?"
"No," said Jimmy, whittling a stick; "I ain't fond of fighting, and I never do it of a Sunday. I wouldn't be guilty of fightin' you, by smoke!"
"I have tuk a bigger nug than you and nicked his kicks into the bottom of his gizzard till his liver-lights fell into my mauleys. So it's nish or knife betwixt us, my bene cove!"
He put his hand upon his hip, where he carried a sheath-knife.
"Raise that hand," said Jimmy Phœbus, with a quick pass of his whittling knife to the giant's throat. "Raise it or, by smoke! yer goes yer jugler."
As Phœbus spoke he lifted one foot, of a prodigious size, as deftly as an elephant hoisting his trunk, and kicked the man's hand from the hip pocket without moving either his own body or countenance. It was done so automatically that the other turned fiercely to see who kicked him, and his sheath-knife, partly raised, was flung by the force of the kick several yards away.