"You lika da gal, too, ha, Samp?"
"The—ah—the tattooed woman? Yes, very well, indeed."
"Ha, you sly Samp! I spik about da leetle ploompa gal—da Mug."
"Oh! Muggie? Castellani's daughter?"
"Ha."
"Well, I don't know her so very well."
"You don' know da Mugga?" Bat's look was becoming dangerously fierce. He straightened himself up from his lounging posture, and his big muscles swelled. "You don' know da Mugga! You tink I no see. You loafa da Mugga! You wanta marry her! You tink 'er reecha, pooty. You miseraba sneaka!" Here Bat, who had worked himself into a fury, swore an eloquent Italian oath.
Sampey's time had come. The two men were alone,—Bat furious and desperate with jealousy; Sampey fearful, but determined; brutality against wit, strength against cunning, fury against patience, a bulldog matched with a mink, a game-cock pitted against an owl.
Sampey pretended to have dropped something accidentally. He stooped to pick it up, and some seconds elapsed before he pretended to have found it. While he was searching for it he approached nearer to Bat, and when he straightened up he brought his face very close to Bat's, and suddenly raised his eyes and stared steadily into those of the Wild Man of Milo.
Bat meanwhile had kept up an insulting tirade, his evident purpose being to force the gentle writer into a fight. But when Sampey raised his eyes and fixed them in a peculiar stare, Bat regarded him a moment in speechless wonder, and then sprang back with a livid face, and in terror cried out: