Now upon my soul I did not mean to be condescending in my speech, but there must have been something in my tone that caused the honest seaman to make a change in his.
"I hope they brought you luck, sir," he said.
I noticed that he had said "sir" involuntarily.
"Indeed they did," I returned. "I'll have to tell you all about it."
But now the bowmen were getting in their oars, and we were close alongside of a small topsail schooner, as fine a bit of ship-building as one would wish to see. She was hove to, and the great mainsail was crackling, and the reef-points keeping up a continuous drumming against it; and the sound was good to my ears.
"What have we here?" called a voice over the rail, only a few feet above our heads.
"A pilot and a passenger," answered Plummer, fending the whale-boat off from the side of the schooner with his hands.
A short rope was thrown over to us, and, laying hold of it, I clambered over the bulwarks, and came down on deck, where I found myself face to face with one of the strangest-looking figures that I have met in the course of my adventures.
Before me stood a slight stoop-shouldered man, dressed in a blue broadcloth coat and a long yellow satin waist-coat. He had on a pair of tight-fitting buckskin breeches thrust into heavy sea-boots. The expression on his face was the remarkable thing about him. At first I thought that he was laughing at me, for his light blue eyes had such an eager twinkling light in them that they appeared to show amusement. His mouth was parted in a smile, and a continual lifting and lowering of his eyebrows lent the idea that he considered me or my appearance some huge joke.
"Is this the passenger or the pilot?" he asked, lifting a heavy cocked hat, and giving it a little flourish, as it were, over his head.