He wore a grey flannel shirt, and his white trousers were held by a blue
silk scarf wound tightly round his narrow waist. He had come up only for
a moment, but finding the poop shaded by the main-topsail he remained
on deck bareheaded. The light chestnut hair curled close about his
well-shaped head, and the clipped beard glinted vividly when he passed
across a narrow strip of sunlight, as if every hair in it had been
a wavy and attenuated gold wire. His mouth was lost in the heavy
moustache; his nose was straight, short, slightly blunted at the end;
a broad band of deeper red stretched under the eyes, clung to the cheek
bones. The eyes gave the face its remarkable expression. The eyebrows,
darker than the hair, pencilled a straight line below the wide and
unwrinkled brow much whiter than the sunburnt face. The eyes, as if
glowing with the light of a hidden fire, had a red glint in their
greyness that gave a scrutinizing ardour to the steadiness of their
gaze.
That man, once so well known, and now so completely forgotten amongst
the charming and heartless shores of the shallow sea, had amongst his
fellows the nickname of "Red-Eyed Tom." He was proud of his luck but not
of his good sense. He was proud of his brig, of the speed of his craft,
which was reckoned the swiftest country vessel in those seas, and proud
of what she represented.
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