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As they came near they caught sight of a solitary figure down towards where the archway submerged had lain, and Aleck made put that it was a big, well-built man-o'-war's man. "Is that one of your fellows, sailor?" said Aleck, with the appellation he had used when they were prisoners together. "Yes, he came over with me from Rockabie. Capital fellow he is too. Don't you know him again?"
But many years of teaching by the fishermen and Tom Bodger, the wooden-legged old man-o'-war's man of Rockabie, had made Aleck, young though he was, an expert manager of a fore and aft sailing boat, and the boy sat fast, rudder in one hand, sheet in the other, ready at the right moment to ease off the rope and by a dexterous touch at the rudder to lessen the pressure upon the canvas so that the boat rose again and raced onward till the great promontory ahead was passed.
It was here long and solitary; with a man-o'-war's boat drawn up about the middle of the prospect, and an officer in charge and pacing the sands like one who waited. I sat immediately down where the rough grass a good deal covered me, and looked for what should follow.
You boys can't make no show agin an old man-o'-war's man like me, as has been up to his waist in blood many a time, an' never ware the worse for it." The sailor addressed spoke to me. "Don't you think it a good way, sir? They are good for us if they try hard, for England can whip any three of us, an' I, for one, don't want to run against him if it can be helped. We have a boat."
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