His head was uncovered--his thick hair, long and unkempt, hung in matted locks upon his shoulders--his heavy mustachios and beard were so black and bushy that they almost concealed his coarse and forbidding features--though I could see the tiger-like glitter of his sharp white teeth as he bit and gnawed his under lip in impotent fury and despair--and his eyes, like leaping flames, blazed with a wrathful ferocity from under his shaggy brows.

He was a huge, heavy man, broad and muscular; his two hands clinched, tied and manacled behind him, looked like formidable hammers capable of striking a man down dead at one blow; his whole aspect was repulsive and terrible--there was no redeeming point about him--for even the apparent fortitude he assumed was mere bravado--meretricious courage--which the first week of the galleys would crush out of him as easily as one crushes the juice out of a ripe grape.

He wore a nondescript costume of vari-colored linen, arranged in folds that would have been the admiration of an artist.

It was gathered about him by means of a brilliant scarlet sash negligently tied.

His brawny arms were bare to the shoulder--his vest was open, and displayed his strong brown throat and chest heaving with the pent-up anger and fear that raged within him.