He is well worth meeting, not only as the opponent of our old friend, Jim Darlington, but because of his own unworthy but interesting character. In those days Skipper Bill Broom was known all up and down the coast and beyond. His fame, such as it was, comes down even to this recent day.
On deck it is muffling dark, with the stars obscured in some dim way by mist or fog. There is a breeze blowing steadily from the broad wastes of the ocean. The bulk of the California coast looms dimly on the port bow. Not more than a half mile distant can be seen the white rushing forward of the breakers towards the rocky coast.
Dangerous work this, navigating the Sea Eagle through the thick gloom of the night but the old man knew his business. He was on the bridge pacing back and forth like some strange animal and giving hoarse directions to the man at the wheel. He knew every inch of that coast, the sunken reefs and dangerous rocks.
"Starboard your helm," he growled.
The sailor spun the wheel obediently. And the captain resumed his pacing back and forth upon the bridge. Not much could be seen of him, except that he was a powerful man, with a peculiar crouching stoop, as if he and the sea were engaged in a mysterious game. One striving to get a dangerous death-hold upon the other, both wary and using unceasing watchfulness.
There was a strange softness in Captain Broom's tread like that of a padding panther, but his arms had the loose forward powerful swing of a gorilla's. Once he stepped into the chart house to look at something and the light of the lamp will give us a square look at him.
"That man a pirate!" you exclaim at the first glance; one who carried the blackest name along the coast as a smuggler and wrecker, who had brought cargoes of wretched slaves from Africa in the days before the Civil War and who had had more marvelous escapes than any man in the history of piracy with the exception of Black Jack Morgan! Impossible!
"Why that man is nothing but an old farmer," you exclaim in disappointment, when you see him. "He ought to be peddling vegetables on market day." But just wait.
True, Skipper Broom had come from a long line of New England farmers, hard, close-fisted, close-mouthed men. Young Broom had broken away from the farm and followed his bent for sea-faring, but to the end of his days, he kept his farmerlike appearance and he affected many of the traits of the yeoman which he found to be on more than one occasion a most useful disguise.
Let's look at him. That heavy winter cap pulled down on his grizzled head gives him a most "Reuben" like appearance. Jeans pants are thrust into heavy cowhide boots. The deadly gray eyes soft as granite have become red rimmed from fits of fury and hard through many scenes of coldly calculated cruelty. A most dangerous customer and I for one, and I ought to know, consider that he will have the better of Jim Darlington in their approaching encounter—and yet Jim is never beaten until the last shot is fired and so it is impossible for me to foretell how this contest of wit and daring will come out.