Chapter 11 - Page 2

the now
rigid lines of his brow. His ruffled right hand was clutched by his
side, as if grasping a cutlass. He paced the room as if advancing upon a
fortification. Meantime a confused buzz of discussion came from the
neighboring chamber. All else was profound midnight tranquillity.
Presently, passing the large mirror over the mantel, Paul caught a
glimpse of his person. He paused, grimly regarding it, while a dash of
pleased coxcombry seemed to mingle with the otherwise savage
satisfaction expressed in his face. But the latter predominated. Soon,
rolling up his sleeve, with a queer wild smile, Paul lifted his right
arm, and stood thus for an interval, eyeing its image in the glass. From
where he lay, Israel could not see that side of the arm presented to the
mirror, but he saw its reflection, and started at perceiving there,
framed in the carved and gilded wood, certain large intertwisted ciphers
covering the whole inside of the arm, so far as exposed, with mysterious
tattooings. The design was wholly unlike the fanciful figures of
anchors, hearts, and cables, sometimes decorating small portions of
seamen's bodies. It was a sort of tattooing such as is seen only on
thoroughbred savages--deep blue, elaborate, labyrinthine, cabalistic.
Israel remembered having beheld, on one of his early voyages, something
similar on the arm of a New Zealand warrior, once met, fresh from
battle, in his native village. He concluded that on some similar early
voyage Paul must have undergone the manipulations of some pagan artist.
Covering his arm again with his laced coat-sleeve, Paul glanced
ironically at the hand of the same arm, now again half muffled in
ruffles, and ornamented with several Parisian rings. He then resumed his
walking with a prowling air, like one haunting an ambuscade; while a
gleam of the consciousness of possessing a character as yet un-fathomed,
and hidden power to back unsuspected projects, irradiated his cold white
brow, which, owing to the shade of his hat in equatorial climates, had
been left surmounting his swarthy face, like the snow topping the Andes.

So at midnight, the heart of the metropolis of modern civilization was
secretly trod by this jaunty barbarian in broadcloth; a sort of
prophetical ghost, glimmering in anticipation upon the advent of those
tragic scenes of the French Revolution which levelled the exquisite
refinement of Paris with the bloodthirsty ferocity of Borneo; showing
that broaches and finger-rings, not less than nose-rings and tattooing,
are tokens of the primeval savageness which ever slumbers in human kind,
civilized or uncivilized.

Israel slept not a wink that night. The troubled spirit of Paul paced
the chamber till morning; when, copiously bathing himself at the