"And a rum 'un he be, take my word for it," returned the whip-jack, or sham sailor. "Look at his rigging--see how he flashes his sticks[33]--those are the tools to rake a three-decker. He's as clever a craft as I've seen this many a day, or I'm no judge." The women were equally enchanted--equally eloquent in the expression of their admiration. "What ogles!" cried a mort. "What pins!" said an autem mort, or married woman. "Sharp as needles," said a dark-eyed dell, who had encountered one of the free and frolicsome glances which our highwayman distributed so liberally among the petticoats. It was at this crisis Dick took off his hat. Cæsar betrayed his baldness. "A thousand pities!" cried the men, compassionating his thinly covered skull, and twisting their own ringlets, glossy and luxuriant, though unconscious of Macassar. "A thousand pities that so fine a fellow should have a sconce like a cocoanut!" "But then his red whiskers," rejoined the women, tired of the uniformity of thick black heads of hair; "what a warmth of coloring they impart to his face; and then only look how beautifully bushy they make his cheeks appear!" La Fosseuse and the court of the Queen of Navarre were not more smitten with the Sieur de Croix's jolly pair of whiskers. The hawk's eye of Turpin ranged over the whole assemblage. Amidst that throng of dark faces there was not one familiar to him. Before him stood the upright man, Zoroaster--so was he called--, a sturdy, stalwart rogue, whose superior strength and stature--as has not unfrequently been the case in the infancy of governments that have risen to more importance than is likely to be the case with that of Lesser Egypt--had been the means of his elevation to his present dignified position. Zoroaster literally _fought_ his way upwards, and had at first to maintain his situation by the strong arm; but he now was enabled to repose upon his hard-won laurels, to smoke "the calumet of peace," and quaff his tipple with impunity. For one of gipsy blood, he presented an unusually jovial, liquor-loving countenance: his eye was mirthful; his lip moist, as if from oft potations; his cheek mellow as an Orleans plum, which fruit, in color and texture, it mightily resembled. Strange to say, also, for one of that lithe race, his person was heavy and hebetudinous; the consequence, no doubt, of habitual intemperance. Like Cribb, he waxed obese upon the championship. There was a kind of mock state in his carriage, as he placed himself before Turpin, and with his left hand twisted up the tail of his dressing-gown, while the right thrust his truncheon into his hip, which was infinitely diverting to the highwayman.