They were nobodies.

They approached.

The skipper gazed in an inanimate way between his feet: he seemed to be swollen to an unnatural size by some awful disease, by the mysterious action of an unknown poison.

He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting, opened his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his puffed face--to speak to them, I suppose--and then a thought seemed to strike him.

His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to see the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all.