He was old, perhaps seventy, his hair was white and venerable-looking, and his person obese.

His black eyes were small, cunning, cold, and bright, and they had the peculiarity of avoiding the face of any person with whom he chanced to be in conversation, at least when that person was looking his way.

Their glance passed over him, under him, round him, anywhere but at him.
As his sobriquet suggested, the colouring of Pereira's flesh was yellow, and the loose skin hung in huge wrinkles upon his cheeks.

His mouth was large and coarse, and his fat hands twitched and grasped continually, as though with a desire of clutching money.

For the rest he was gorgeously dressed, and, like his companions, somewhat in liquor.
Such was the outward appearance of Pereira, the fountain-head of the slave-trade on this part of the coast, who was believed in his day to be the very worst man in Africa, a pre-eminence to which few can hope to attain.