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Rh take a squint at 'em, them birds look more like buzzards, don't they now?—a hatchin' out wicked little notions. And there's nothing I'd enjoy more than shootin' a mean-beaked undertaker of a buzzard, especially if he was waitin' to pick my bones."

These ruminations were an excellent excuse for a rest from the boresome work with the pick, and Benson, first twisting off a corner of a plug as dark as mellow New Orleans molasses, continued, shifting his figures a bit:— "Buzzards—did I call 'em buzzards! No, son, that's hard on the birds—they're more like pussy-footed, slimy-hearted octypusses, with bilge-water instid o' red blood in their veins.

"Ever seen an octypuss? They got eight arms with a hundred suckers on each arm. I seen one oncet. It drownded a man in the Bay o' Biscay; sucked him right under. It wahn't no pleasant sight, either,—them big, snaky arms a-coilin' round his neck, a-stranglin' the poor cuss, and the wicked-lookin' eyes a grinnin' like the Devil himself had turned into a fish.

"But Lor', them devil-fish over there can't catch nothin' but crabs, though they'll try and start suthin' afore the sun sets, or I don't know a maintop from a cutwater.

"They got a female bird with them, with red and yaller feathers. That there petticoat sets in the breeze like a sail on a lugger. But look out for her, my boy. I seen a little picture card onct, in a store up Boston way, with tape around it. It had some chantey of Shakespeare's I guess it was, a-written on it, somethin' about the female o' the species