The drift of the boat had brought us so close that he could have grasped the gunwale had he been so minded.
'Sapperment!' he cried in a peevish voice; 'to think of my brother Nonus serving me such a trick! What would our blessed mother have said could she have seen it?
My whole kit gone, to say nothing of my venture in the voyage! And now I have kicked off a pair of new jack boots that cost sixteen rix-dollars at Vanseddar's at Amsterdam.

I can't swim in jack-boots, nor can I walk without them.' 'Won't you come in out of the wet, sir ?' asked Reuben, who could scarce keep serious at the stranger's appearance and address.

A pair of long arms shot out of the water, and in a moment, with a lithe, snake-like motion, the man wound himself into the boat and coiled his great length upon the stern-sheets.

Very lanky he was and very thin, with a craggy hard face, clean-shaven and sunburned, with a thousand little wrinkles intersecting it in every direction.

He had lost his hat, and his short wiry hair, slightly flecked with grey, stood up in a bristle all over his head.