it was nothing but ignorant prejudice on the part of the foreman
stevedore to say, as he did in my hearing: "I bet he's a furriner of
some sort." A man may have black hair without being set down for a Dago.
I have known a West-country sailor, boatswain of a fine ship, who looked
more Spanish than any Spaniard afloat I've ever met. He looked like a
Spaniard in a picture.

Competent authorities tell us that this earth is to be finally the
inheritance of men with dark hair and brown eyes. It seems that already
the great majority of mankind is dark-haired in various shades. But
it is only when you meet one that you notice how men with really black
hair, black as ebony, are rare. Bunter's hair was absolutely black,
black as a raven's wing. He wore, too, all his beard (clipped, but a
good length all the same), and his eyebrows were thick and bushy. Add
to this steely blue eyes, which in a fair-haired man would have been
nothing so extraordinary, but in that sombre framing made a startling
contrast, and you will easily understand that Bunter was noticeable
enough.

If it had not been for the quietness of his movements, for the general
soberness of his demeanour, one would have given him credit for a
fiercely passionate nature.

Of course, he was not in his first youth; but if the expression "in the
force of his age" has any meaning, he realized it completely. He was
a tall man, too, though rather spare. Seeing him from his poop
indefatigably busy with his duties, Captain Ashton, of the clipper
ship _Elsinore_, lying just ahead of the _Sapphire_, remarked once to a
friend that "Johns has got somebody there to hustle his ship along for
him."