And, all at once, he recognized him.
This was the big beach comber with whom Gavin had fought barely twenty-four hours earlier.

The man bore bruises and swellings a-plenty on his rugged features, where Brice's whalebone blows had crashed.

And they had distorted his face almost past recognition.

He moved, too, with manifest discomfort, as if all his huge body were as sore as his visage.
"Hello, Roke!!" hailed Milo genially, then in amaze, "what in thunder have you been doing to yourself?
Been trying to stop the East Coast Flyer?
Or did you just get into an argument with one of the channel dredges ?" "Fell," said Roke, succinctly, jerking his thumb back toward the corrugated iron hut.

"Climbed my roof to mend a leak.
Fell.