ress. 'Twas then I had
space to note him more particularly. His skin was the rich colour of a
well-seasoned ship's bell, and he was of the middle height, owned a
slight, graceful figure, tapering down at the waist like a top, which had
set off a silk coat to perfection and soured the beaus with envy. His
movements, however, had all the decision of a man of action and of force.
But his eye it was took possession of me--an unfathomable, dark eye,
which bore more toward melancholy than sternness, and yet had something
of both. He wore a clean, ruffled shirt, an exceeding neat coat and
breeches of blue broadcloth, with plate burnished buttons, and white
cotton stockings. Truly, this was a person to make one look twice, and
think oftener. Then, as I went to pledge him, I, too, was caught for his
name.

"Paul," said he; "John Paul, of the brigantine John, of Kirkcudbright, in
the West India trade."

"Captain Paul--" I began. But my gratitude stuck fast in my throat and
flowed out of my eyes. For the thought of the horrors from which he had
saved me for the first time swept over me; his own kind treatment
overcame me, and I blubbered like a child. With that he turned his back.

"Hoots," says he, again, "dinna ye thank me. 'Tis naething to scuttle a
nest of vermin, but the duty of ilka man who sails the seas." By this,
having got the better of his emotion, he added: "And if it has been my
good fortune to save a gentleman, Mr. Carvel, I thank God for it, as you
must."

Save for a slackness inside the leg and in the hips, Macbluir's clothes
fitted me well enough, and presently I reappeared in the captain's cabin
rigged out in the mate's shore suit of purplish drab, and brass-buckled
shoes that came high over the instep, with my hair combed clear and tied
with a ribbon behind. I felt at last that I might lay some claim to
respectability. And what was my surprise to find Captain Paul buried to
his middle in a great chest, and the place strewn about with laced and
broidered coats and waistcoats, frocks and Newmarkets, like any tailor's
shop in Church Street. So strange they looked in those tropical seas
that he was near to catching me in a laugh as he straightened up. 'Twas
then I noted that he was a younger man than I had taken him for.

"You gentlemen from the southern colonies are too well nourished, by
far," says he; "you are apt to be large of chest and limb. 'Odds bods,
Mr. Carvel, it grieves me to see you apparelled like