"I am fifteen years old next week, and something here,"-- here he laid his right hand on his left side--"tells me I am a man." As he spoke, another wave leapt skyward, and out of it emerged the form of a man.
"Yes!" cried Septimus.

"Her father!" Septimus was the youngest of seven children, most of whom were orphans.
But we digress.
"Belay there--haul in your mainslacks, and splice your marline-spike.
Where are you coming to ?" cried Peeler, the coastguardsman--for such, we need hardly say, was the rank of the new arrival.
"How are you ?" said Sep, in an off-hand way.
"Blooming," said the not altogether refined Peeler.
A gust of wind lifted them both up the twenty remaining yards of the cliff, and left them standing on a sheltered crag at the extreme brink.
"Spin us a yarn," said Sep.
The setting sun cast a lurid flash over the figures of that strangely assorted pair.

The next moment it had set, and nothing was visible but the reflection of the end of Sep's cigar in the glass eye of his interlocutor.
Septimus Minor had lived in Crocusville ever since he could remember, and the coastguardsman some years longer.

Hence Sep's request.
Mr Peeler was a fine specimen of his class.

He wore a sou'wester and boots to match, and round his shoulders-- But why all this minute detail concerning one who is to disappear--if he had but known it!--before that howling night-- "Twas in '52 she grounded," said he, transferring something from his right cheek to his left.