SINGLE-HANDEDNESS 173 



apparent from the boat. On board the man wore neither 

 coat nor shirt. The cheerful note of colour, so conspicuous 

 as he sailed to the anchorage, was his sunburnt skin. Some 

 men burn brown, some red. He was of the red variety, 

 and his bare skin looked a deal more respectable than 

 his cockroach-nibbled coat. To him, clothing save for 

 decency's sake had become superfluous. He felt that " to 

 be naked is to be so much nearer the being man than to 

 go in livery." He wore no hat, no boots. Pyjama trousers 

 of cotton composed his entire workaday costume ; 

 dungaree trousers and a musty coat his Court dress. Yet 

 he was clean and glowing with health and cheerfulness ; 

 self-reliant, splendidly independent. Had he allowed his 

 mind to dwell on clothing his independence would have 

 been less. He might have required the aid of a black boy 

 to navigate his boat, and the continual presence of a black 

 boy in a small boat does not make for sweetness and light. 



Single-handedness 



Another grandly free man sailed his cutter into the bay 

 one fine morning. He knew the water and ran her on the 

 sand, brought his anchor ashore and shoved her off, to 

 swing lazily the while. When I paid him a ceremonious 

 visit, I found that he had but one arm. The empty right 

 sleeve was the more pathetic when I saw him mixing his 

 flour for a damper, and in the cunning twists and wriggling 

 by which the fingers freed each other of the sticky dough 

 and other dexterous manipulations, I soon came to recog- 

 nise that with his left hand he was as deft as many men 

 with their right and left. He had sailed the boat ladened 

 with wire netting and heavy goods from Bowen, 200 miles 

 south, and was on his way to his selection, 100 miles 

 further north. A wiry, slight man though a real "shell- 

 back," one who had been steeped in and saturated with 

 every sea, was " giving the sea best," nerve-shaken, so he 

 said — and yet sailing a cutter with but 3 or 4 inches of free- 



