You want six months in a man-of-war's launch. This is what
comes of peace already!"
The fishermen stared at this extraordinary man, who had taken all the
business out of Master Tugwell's hands; but without thinking twice about
it, all obeyed him with a speed that must have robbed them of a quantity
of rust. For although he was not in uniform, and bore no sword, his
dress was conspicuous, as he liked to have it, and his looks and deeds
kept suit with it. For he wore a blue coat (very badly made, with gilt
buttons and lappets too big for him), a waistcoat of dove-colored silk,
very long, coming over the place where his stomach should have been, and
white plush breeches, made while he was blockading Boulogne in 1801, and
therefore had scarcely any flesh upon his bones. Peace having fattened
him a little, these breeches had tightened upon him (as their way is
with a boy having six weeks' holiday); but still they could not make his
legs look big, though they showed them sharp and muscular. Below them
were brisk little sinewy calves in white silk hose, with a taper descent
to ankles as fine as a lady's, and insteps bright with large silver
buckles. Yet that which surpassed all the beauty of the clothes was the
vigor of the man inside them, who seemed to quicken and invigorate the
whole, even to the right sleeve, doubled up from the want of any arm
inside it. But the loss of the right arm, and the right eye also, seemed
to be of no account to the former owner, so hard did he work with the
residue of his body, and so much did he express with it.
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