of the City of Too Many Caliphs.

He wore loose clothes of a strange bluish drab colour, and a
conservative, round Panama hat without the cock-a-loop indentations
and cants with which Northern fanciers disfigure the tropic
head-gear. Moreover, he was the homeliest man I have ever seen. His
ugliness was less repellent than startling--arising from a sort of
Lincolnian ruggedness and irregularity of feature that spellbound
you with wonder and dismay. So may have looked afrites or the
shapes metamorphosed from the vapour of the fisherman's vase. As he
afterward told me, his name was Judson Tate; and he may as well be
called so at once. He wore his green silk tie through a topaz ring;
and he carried a cane made of the vertebræ of a shark.

Judson Tate accosted me with some large and casual inquiries about
the city's streets and hotels, in the manner of one who had but
for the moment forgotten the trifling details. I could think of no
reason for disparaging my own quiet hotel in the downtown district;
so the mid-morning of the night found us already victualed and
drinked (at my expense), and ready to be chaired and tobaccoed in a
quiet corner of the lobby.

There was something on Judson Tate's mind, and, such as it was, he
tried to convey it to me. Already he had accepted me as his friend;
and when I looked at his great, snuff-brown first-mate's hand, with
which he brought emphasis to his periods, within six inches of my
nose, I wondered if, by any chance, he was as sudden in conceiving
enmity against strangers.

When this man began to talk I perceived in him a certain power.