George MacDonald Fraser - Black Ajax

The black man is dying, but neither he nor any of the other men in the barn suspects it. After all, he is quite young, and if the heavy negroid face is unhealthily puffy and badly scarred by old wounds which show oddly pale against the coarse dark skin, these are hardly fatal signs, and not unusual in his profession. He , overweight and flabby, on a bench against the rough timber wall, a grimy blanket draped across his naked shoulders, an old hat on his woolly bullet head, and the hand holding a bottle of cheap spirits shakes visibly when he raises it to his lips, one of which has been split so deeply that it has healed into a permanent cleft running halfway to his chin. His arms are long and muscular, and though there are creases of fat overlapping his waistband, his sheer bulk gives an impression of formidable strength not yet quite gone to seed. His eyes are closed, and he is plainly tired, but not with a weariness that can be cured by rest; there may be no outward sign of deadly illness, but the pain in his kidneys and the ringing in his head are now continuous, and seem to him to be draining the spirit out of his big, hard-used body. A few years ago he was as famous in England as Napoleon; now he hardly remembers that time.