than severity. The form of this young man was of that happy size which so
singularly unites activity with strength. It seemed to be well knit, while
it was justly proportioned, and strikingly graceful. Though these several
personal qualifications were exhibited under the disadvantages of the
perfectly simple, though neat and rather tastefully disposed, attire of a
common mariner, they were sufficiently imposing to cause the suspicious
dealer in buckram to hesitate before he would venture to address the
stranger, whose eye appeared riveted, by a species of fascination, on the
reputed slaver in the outer harbour. A curl of the upper lip, and another
strange smile, in which scorn was mingled with his mutterings, decided the
vacillating mind of the good-man. Without venturing to disturb a reverie
that seemed so profound, he left the youth leaning against the head of the
pile where he had long been standing, perfectly unconscious of the
presence of any intruder, and turned a little hastily to examine the rest
of the party.

One of the remaining two was a white man, and the other a negro. Both had
passed the middle age, and both in their appearances, furnished the
strongest proofs of long exposure to the severity of climate, and to
numberless tempests. They were dressed in the plain, weather-soiled, and
tarred habiliments of common seamen, and bore about their several persons
all the other unerring evidences of their peculiar profession. The former
was of a short, thick-set powerful frame, in which, by a happy ordering of
nature, a little confirmed perhaps by long habit, the strength was
principally seated about the broad and brawny shoulders, and strong sinewy
arms, as if, in the construction of the man, the inferior members had been
considered of little other use than to transfer the superior to the
different situations in which the former were to display their energies.
His head was in proportion to the more immediate members; the forehead
low, and nearly covered with hair; the eyes small, obstinate, sometimes