All this might have passed without much notice, for in those times the province was so much the resort of adventurers of all characters and climes that any oddity in dress or behavior attracted but little attention.  But in a little while this strange sea monster, thus strangely cast up on dry land, began to encroach upon the long-established customs and customers of the place; to interfere in a dictatorial manner in the affairs of the ninepin alley and the bar-room, until in the end he usurped an absolute command over the little inn.  It was in vain to attempt to withstand his authority.  He was not exactly quarrelsome, but boisterous and peremptory, like one accustomed to tyrannize on a quarter deck; and there was a dare-devil air about every thing he said and did, that inspired a wariness in all bystanders.  Even the half-pay officer, so long the hero of the club, was soon silenced by him; and the quiet burghers stared with wonder at seeing their inflammable man of war so readily and quietly extinguished.

And then the tales that he would tell were enough to make a peaceable man’s hair stand on end.  There was not a sea fight, or marauding or free-booting adventure that had happened within the last twenty years but he seemed perfectly versed in it.  He delighted to talk of the exploits of the buccaneers in the West-Indies and on the Spanish Main.  How his eyes would glisten as he described the waylaying of treasure ships, the desperate fights, yard arm and yard arm—­broadside and broad side—­the boarding and capturing of large Spanish galleons! with what chuckling relish would he describe the descent upon some rich Spanish colony; the rifling of a church; the sacking of a convent!  You would have thought you heard some gormandizer dilating upon the roasting a savory goose at Michaelmas as he described the roasting of some Spanish Don to make him discover his treasure—­a detail given with a minuteness that made every rich old burgher present turn uncomfortably in his chair.  All this would be told with infinite glee, as if he considered it an excellent joke; and then he would give such a tyrannical leer in the face of his next neighbor, that the poor man would be fain to laugh out of sheer faint-heartedness.  If any one, however, pretended to contradict him in any of his stories he was on fire in an instant.  His very cocked hat assumed a momentary fierceness, and seemed to resent the contradiction.—­“How the devil should you know as well as I!  I tell you it was as I say!” and he would at the same time let slip a broadside of thundering oaths and tremendous sea phrases, such as had never been heard before within those peaceful walls.

Indeed, the worthy burghers began to surmise that he knew more of these stories than mere hearsay.  Day after day their conjectures concerning him grew more and more wild and fearful.  The strangeness of his manners, the mystery that surrounded him, all made him something incomprehensible in their eyes.  He was a kind of monster of the deep to them—­he was a merman—­he was behemoth—­he was leviathan—­in short, they knew not what he was.