'Take help to those who need help' said a voice out of the sea.
'Zounds, man, keep a guard on your oar! I fear a pat from it very much
more than I do the water.'

These words were delivered in so calm and self-possessed a tone that
all concern for the swimmer was set at rest. Drawing in our oars we
faced round to have a look at him. The drift of the boat had brought us
so close that he could have grasped the gunwale had he been so minded.

'Sapperment!' he cried in a peevish voice; 'to think of my brother Nonus
serving me such a trick! What would our blessed mother have said could
she have seen it? My whole kit gone, to say nothing of my venture in
the voyage! And now I have kicked off a pair of new jack boots that cost
sixteen rix-dollars at Vanseddar's at Amsterdam. I can't swim in
jack-boots, nor can I walk without them.'

'Won't you come in out of the wet, sir?' asked Reuben, who could scarce
keep serious at the stranger's appearance and address. A pair of long
arms shot out of the water, and in a moment, with a lithe, snake-like
motion, the man wound himself into the boat and coiled his great length
upon the stern-sheets. Very lanky he was and very thin, with a craggy
hard face, clean-shaven and sunburned, with a thousand little wrinkles
intersecting it in every direction. He had lost his hat, and his short
wiry hair, slightly flecked with grey, stood up in a bristle all over
his head. It was hard to guess at his age, but he could scarce have
been under his fiftieth year, though the ease with which he had boarded
our boat proved that his strength and energy were unimpaired. Of all
his characteristics, however, nothing attracted my attention so much as
his eyes, which were almost covered by their drooping lids, and yet
looked out through the thin slits which remained with marvellous