“A rank scamp!”5 cried the upright man; and this exclamation, however equivocal it may sound, was intended, on his part, to be highly complimentary.
“I believe ye,” returned the ruffler, stroking his chin—”one may see that he’s no half swell by the care with which he cultivates the best gifts of nature, his whiskers. He’s a rank jib.”6
“Togged out to the ruffian, no doubt,” said the palliard, who was incomparably the shabbiest rascal in the corps. “Though a needy mizzler mysel, I likes to see a cove vot’s vell dressed. Jist twig his swell kickseys and pipes;7 if they ain’t the thing, I’m done. Lame Harry can’t dance better nor he—no, nor Jerry Juniper neither.”
“I’m dumbfounded,” roared the dummerar, “if he can’t patter romany8 as vel as the best on us! He looks like a rum ‘un.”
“And a rum ‘un he be, take my word for it,” returned the whip-jack, or sham sailor. “Look at his rigging—see how he flashes his sticks9—those are the tools to rake a tree-decker. He’s as clever a craft as I’ve seen this many a day, or I’m no judge.”
The women were equally enchanted—equally eloquent in the expression of their admiration.
“What ogles!” cried a mort.
“What pins!” said an autem mort or married woman.
“Sharp as needles,” said a dark-eyed dell, who had encountered one of the free and frolicsome glances which our highwayman distributed so liberally amongst the petticoats.
It was at this crisis Dick took off his hat. Cæsar betrayed his baldness.
“A thousand pities!” cried the men, compassionating his thinly covered skull, and twisting their own ringlets, glossy and luxuriant, though unconscious of Macassar. “A thousand pities that so fine a fellow should have a sconce like a cocoa-nut!”
“But then his red whiskers,” rejoined the women, tired of the uniformity of thick black heads of hair; “what a warmth of colouring they impart to his face, and then only look how beautifully bushy they make his cheeks appear!”
La Fosseuse and the court of the Queen of Navarre were not more smitten with the Sieur de Croix’s jolly pair of whiskers.
The hawk’s eye of Turpin ranged over the whole assemblage. Amidst that throng of dark faces there was not one familiar to him.
Before him stood the upright man, Zoroaster (so was he called), a sturdy, stalwart rogue, whose superior strength and stature (as has not unfrequently been the case in the infancy of governments that have risen to more importance than is likely to be the case with that of Lesser Egypt) had been the means of his elevation to his present dignified position. Zoroaster literally fought his way upwards, and had at first to maintain his situation by the strong arm; but he now was enabled to repose upon his hard-won laurels, to smoke “the calumet of peace,” and quaff his tipple with impunity.
For one of gipsy blood, he presented an unusually jovial, liquor-loving countenance; his eye was mirthful; his lip moist, as if from oft potations; his cheek mellow as an Orleans plum, which fruit, in colour and texture, it mightily resembled. Strange to say, also, for one of that lithe race, his person was heavy and hebetudinous; the consequence, no doubt, of habitual intemperance. Like Cribb, he waxed obese upon the championship. There was a kind of mock state in his carriage, as he placed himself before Turpin, and with his left hand twisted up the tail of his dressing-gown, while the right thrust his truncheon into his hip, which was infinitely diverting to the highwayman.
Turpin’s attention, however, was chiefly directed towards his neighbour, the ruffler, in whom he recognised a famous impostor of the day, with whose history he was sufficiently well acquainted to be able at once to identify the individual. We have before stated, that a magnificent coal-black beard decorated the chin of this worthy; but this was not all—his costume was in perfect keeping with his beard, and consisted of a very theatrical-looking tunic, upon the breast of which was embroidered, in golden wire, the Maltese cross; while over his shoulders were thrown the ample folds of a cloak of Tyrian hue. To his side was girt a long and doughty sword, which he termed, in his knightly phrase, Excalibur; and upon his profuse hair rested a hat as broad in the brim as a Spanish sombrero.