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Swift and terrible as this conception was when it swept upon me, it grew deeper as I learned more fully the details of our situation. Just in front of where I lingered in my saddle, the crush slightly parted, and I noticed a tall man step forward, a fair man, having a light beard slightly tinged with gray, and wearing the undress uniform of a captain of infantry.
A number of his colleagues were hanging over her almost idiotically; her face was gay and her voice came to his ears, as he turned, with the accent of her cadenced laughter running through her talk like a chime of tiny bells flitting through a strain of music. "This is the third time she's been here," said Battle, rubbing his beard the wrong way.
"Well, gentlemen," continued our adventurer, "may I lose the name of De Croustillac, may my coat of arms be forever smirched with disgrace, if in one month from this very day, in spite of all the buccaneers, filibusters or cannibals in Martinique or in the world, Blue Beard is not the wife of Polyphème de Croustillac!"
Arrived within two hundred yards of the hotel, we were set down in the mud. On alighting, a gentleman who had been my fellow-traveller politely offered to guide me, and soon after addressed me by name. "Who can you possibly be?" I asked so completely had a beard metamorphosed an acquaintance of five years' standing. Once within the hotel, I had the greatest difficulty in finding my way about.
The ejected one stood watching us with sorrow shadowing his large eyes. He was of middle size; with the form of a David of Michelangelo, though lithe, and he wore no hat, but had a long, brown beard, which, with his brown hair, parted in the middle and falling over his shoulders, and his archaic garb, gave me a singular shock.
There was severity in every line of his long, loose body; in the hard wrinkles of his forehead, in his ill-nurtured gray beard, which was so harsh that it rasped like wire upon his coat as he turned his head in quick appraisement of his surroundings.
On his left brow he had a savage scar. His strength and determination were very extraordinary; I was to learn within a few weeks how strong he was, how ferocious and dangerous. His age might be guessed at near sixty for all his vivacity, for at close quarters I could see unmistakably the senile arc in either eye, and, as the reader knows, his hair and beard were very white.
Things were in this state when, one evening, they received a visit which claims a new chapter to itself. The visitor referred to in the last chapter was a tall, broad-shouldered old man with a snowy head of hair and a flowing white beard, a long, loose black garment, and a stout staff about six feet long.
The speaker had come from behind the curtains and was the owner of the wrathful eyes; a heavily built man of medium weight, a bold man with a handsome black beard, though the top of his head was bald. "You were always a good shot, Trevalyon, when the target was a heart," he repeated savagely.
"Yes, I know him very well," answered Old Beard, with deep bitterness in his tone. "That's Goat Hennessey. But that's the first time I've seen him in twenty-five years. He must have just come here recently." "Goat Hennessey? I heard of him when I was in Mars City." "Goat Hennessey was one of my most trusted friends," said Old Beard.
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