KING PEST
A TALE CONTAINING AN ALLEGORY
The things which they abhor in rascal routes.
Buckhurst’s Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex
The room, though ill:contrived, smoke-blackened, low-pitched, and in every other respect agreeing with the general character of such places at the period, was nevertheless, in the opinion of the grotesque groups scattered here and there within it, sufficiently well adapted to its purpose.
Og these groups our two seamen formed, I think, the most interesting, if not the most conspicuous.
The one who appeared to be the elder, and whom his companion addressed by the characteristic appellation of “Legs,” was at the same time much the taller of the two. He might have measured six feet and a half, and an habitual stoop in the shoulders seemed to have been the necessary consequence of an altitude so enormous. Superfluities in height were, however, more than accounted for by deficiencies in other respects. He was exceedingly thin; and might, as his associates asserted, have answered, when drunk, for a pennant at the mast-head, or, when sober, have served for a jib-boom, But these jests, and others of a similar nature, had evidently produced, at no time, any effect upon the cachinnatory muscles of the tar, With high cheeksbones, a large hawk-nose, retreating chin, fallen under-jaw, and huge protruding white eyes, the expression of his countenance, although tinged with a species of dogged indifference to matters and things in general, was not the less utterly solemn and serious beyond all attempts at imitation or description.
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