"You like 'm five stick?" Daughtry insisted of the dark interior.

"Me like 'm," the darkness answered, and through the darkness the body
that owned the voice approached with such strange sounds that the steward
lighted a match to see.

A blear-eyed ancient stood before him, balancing on a single crutch. His
eyes were half-filmed over by a growth of morbid membrane, and what was
not yet covered shone red and irritated. His hair was mangy, standing
out in isolated patches of wispy grey. His skin was scarred and wrinkled
and mottled, and in colour was a purplish blue surfaced with a grey
coating that might have been painted there had it not indubitably grown
there and been part and parcel of him.

A blighted leper--was Daughtry's thought as his quick eyes leapt from
hands to feet in quest of missing toe- and finger-joints. But in those
items the ancient was intact, although one leg ceased midway between knee
and thigh.

"My word! What place stop 'm that fella leg?" quoth Daughtry, pointing
to the space which the member would have occupied had it not been absent.

"Big fella shark-fish, that fella leg stop 'm along him," the ancient
grinned, exposing a horrible aperture of toothlessness for a mouth.

"Me old fella boy too much," the one-legged Methuselah quavered. "Long
time too much no smoke 'm tobacco. Suppose 'm you big fella white
marster give 'm me one fella stick, close up me washee-washee you that
fella steamer."