Mr. Wells never contradicts Joe; but every now and then (forgetting that
Joe can see) he shakes a sceptic head, and, leaning towards you,
whispers (forgetting that Joe can only hear when you shout at him) that
you must be pleased to remember that "_that's_ what he thinks he done;
and no doubt he _thinks_ that it was so; and it may be it was, and I
should never think of contradicting, not no man; but I has my own
opinion in the matter. _I don't_ think it was so. I think he's half
dreaming and half telling a tale. That's what _I_ think."
"But," you inquire, "is it not true that Joe was once a pirate?"
"Oh, yes," he cries at once, smiling proudly; "Oh, yes. Joe was a
pirate right enough. What, haven't you heard him tell how they boarded a
Spanish ship, and cut the throats and broke the heads of the swarthy
crew? Oh, you ought to hear him tell that. It's as good as a play." And
here he leans forward, and calls across to chuckling and gurgling Joe.
"Joe! Tell the genneman how you boarded that Spanish ship, and cut the
throats of them there swarthy Spaniards."
* * * * *
At this Old Joe seems to be smitten with a sudden frenzy. I have never
seen anything like it. After a preliminary canter in the laughing line
he suddenly makes taut his body; his eyes bulge from his head; his face
becomes crimson and his nose blue; then, with his mouth open, while he
hisses like a steam-saw and roars like a bull and sends the most
extraordinary imitation of throat-cutting spluttering wetly from his
distended lips, he waves his right arm madly and frantically in the air,
makes imaginary stabs in front of him, draws imaginary knives across his
throat, and brings down the butt ends of imaginary carbines on the
supposititious heads of the swarthy crew unkindly resurrected to be
slain again.
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