He had shaven his whiskers since I had seen him, but wore a large jet-black mustache on his upper lip; and a twisted Panama chain round his neck, supporting an instrument made of some bright yellow hardwood, highly polished, resembling a boatswain's pipe in shape; the ventiges inlaid with gold. His cap, of the same sort of leather as his belt, was richly embroidered with a band of golden thistles above the scoop, which was of tortoiseshell hooped in with gold, coming very low down over his eyes, while the top, like a hussar's, doubled over on the left side of his head, where it ended in a massive tassel of gold bullion. He had buff gloves stuck in his belt; and his hands, strong and muscular, but fair as a woman's, were richly decorated with several valuable rings. There had been _one_ alteration in his appearance, however, that I surmised he would have dispensed with if he could; and that was a broad, deep, and scarcely cicatrized scar down his sun-burnt cheek. "My Kingston friend--proof positive," thought I. I had never seen so handsome a man before, bronzed almost black though he was by wind and fierce suns--such perfect symmetry, conjoined with such muscle and strength--such magnificent bodily proportions, with so fine a face and forehead; and such pearl-white teeth--but the fiend looked forth in the withering sparkle of his hazel eye. "The thistle!" said I to myself, as the old Scottish brooch, and the general predominance of the national emblem in his equipment attracted my attention; "alas, can love of country, pervading as it is, still linger in the bosom of a man _without_ a country; of one whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand against him; _of the Tiger of the sea_!" Yes, like the dying lamp in the sepulchre, flickering after its fellows have long been for ever quenched, whose faint and uncertain beams seem still to sanctify, if they cannot warm, the gloomy precincts, where all beside is cold, and dark, and dead;--it was the last ray of blessed light, gleaming through the mist of surrounding rottenness and desolation--the last pale halo of virtuous and holy feeling hovering to depart from off the obdurate and heaven-scathed heart of the God-forsaken PIRATE. Unjust--unjust. There _was another_--a kindlier, a warmer, a steadier flame, that still burnt sun-bright in that polluted tabernacle--all worthy of a purer shrine--nor left it until, abreast of the spark of life itself, it was shattered from his riven heart by the dart of the Destroyer; and the dark and felon spirit, whirled to its tremendous account on the shriek of unutterable despair, crushed from him in his mortal agony, as the dancing waves closed, howling and hissing like water-fiends, over the murderer's grave. But let me not anticipate. From his manner I could not say whether he knew me or not.