It was a clear reach of the river, with Barking Level upon one side and the melancholy Plumstead Marshes upon the other.

At our hail the man in the stern sprang up from the deck and shook his two clinched fists at us, cursing the while in a high, cracked voice.

He was a good-sized, powerful man, and as he stood poising himself with legs astride I could see that from the thigh downwards there was but a wooden stump upon the right side.

At the sound of his strident, angry cries there was movement in the huddled bundle upon the deck.

It straightened itself into a little black man--the smallest I have ever seen--with a great, misshapen head and a shock of tangled, dishevelled hair.