Nothing more was said. The tall man lit a cigar, threw himself 54 into an easy attitude on the settee, opened a richly-bound volume, and waited. Ten minutes may have gone by when the trampling of feet was heard on the smooth rocks outside the building, and the voice of Mr. Gibbs exclaimed,
“Easy, will ye? Doctor! Don’t ye see it tears the narves out of me to hobble with this broomstick-handle of a leg! There! Stop a bit! How in thunder am I to climb this ladder? Oh!” Here a low howl of pain. “Another shove. Easy, old Sawbones! So––give us another push, will ye? All right! There, that’ll do.”
The next minute Mr. Bill Gibbs stood on the broad piazza, and, with the assistance of a crutch, he hobbled to the entrance of the apartment, and only pausing to recover his wind and compose his features, he pulled off his straw hat and entered.
“So ho! Mr. Gibbs,” said the man on the settee, as the burly, lame ruffian darkened the entrance, laying the book down as he spoke, and waving his delicate handkerchief before him.
“So ho! Mr. Gibbs, you’ve come back at last! Delighted to see you. I am, ’pon my soul. Ah! one of those stout pins gone? Why, how’s this? Some little accident? Santa Cruz rum and a tumble down the hatchway, perhaps, eh? D’ye smoke? Take a cheroot. Put that bag on the table.”
All this was said in a gay, gibing tone, with an indifference and sang froid that a tight-rope dancer might have been proud of; and as he ended, he threw a handful of cigars across the table, and pushed the pan of coals toward his visitor. Before, however, Gibbs had time to utter a word in reply, his companion, while lolling over the settee, caught up an opera-glass from the table, and, placing it to his eyes, went on:
“Ha! ho! the fore-top-mast of my pretty long-legged schooner is gone. Pretty stick it was! I suppose, Master Gibbs, that you”––he nodded fiercely without removing the glass––“cut it up for that lovely new leg you’ve mounted. Ay, my beauty!” again apostrophizing the vessel, which lay like a wounded bird in the calm inlet before him; “but where’s my handsome barge, that used to cover the long gun? Ho! stormy weather you’ve seen of late.”
During all this one-sided conversation Gibbs had managed to wriggle his mutilated body on to a wicker chair, where he steadied himself with his crutch, evincing manifest signs of choler the while by running his fat fingers through the reddish door-mat of hair, hitching up his trowsers, and rapping nervously his timber stump of a leg on the floor, until at last, unable, apparently, longer to control himself, he burst out, with his bad face suffused with passion,
“I say, Captain Brand, it’s time to end them ’ere gibes. What’s took place is unfortinate; but, howsoever, I has a bag of shiners and a wooden leg to show for it, and d––n the odds.”