Women of any race, as you shall see, looked on me with a favouring eye.

Under my arms, sun-shielded, my skin was milk-white as my mother's.

My eyes were blue.
My moustache, beard and hair were that golden-yellow such as one sometimes sees in paintings of the northern sea-kings.

Ay--I must have come of that old stock, long-settled in England, and, though born in a countryside cottage, the sea still ran so salt in my blood that I early found my way to ships to become a sea-cuny.

That is what I was--neither officer nor gentleman, but sea-cuny, hard-worked, hard-bitten, hard-enduring.
I was of value to Raa Kook, hence his royal protection.