CHAPTER V.
I came out from tea in the cabin to find the tug _Britannia_ in sight.
She was the craft that was to tow us down Chesapeake Bay to sea.
Strolling for'ard I noted the sailors being routed out of the forecastle by Sundry Buyers, for ever tenderly pressing his abdomen with his hands.
Another man was helping Sundry Buyers at routing out the sailors.

I asked Mr.Pike who the man was.
"Nancy--my bosun; ain't he a peach ?" was the answer I got, and from the mate's manner of enunciation I was quite aware that "Nancy" had been used derisively.
Nancy could not have been more than thirty, though he looked as if he had lived a very long time.

He was toothless and sad and weary of movement.
His eyes were slate-coloured and muddy, his shaven face was sickly yellow.

Narrow-shouldered, sunken-chested, with cheeks cavernously hollow, he looked like a man in the last stages of consumption.

Little life as Sundry Buyers showed, Nancy showed even less life.