His nose was a pug of an intense bluish red, one tint arising
from the present cold, and the other from the preventive checks which he
had been so long accustomed to take to drive out such an unpleasant
intruder. His grizzled hair waved its locks gently to the wind, and his
face was distorted with an immoderate quid of tobacco which protruded
his right cheek. This personage was second officer and steersman on
board of the vessel, and his name was Obadiah Coble. He had been
baptised Obadiah about sixty years before; that is to say if he had been
baptised at all. He stood so motionless at the helm, that you might have
imagined him to have been frozen there as he stood, were it not that
his eyes occasionally wandered from the compass on the binnacle to the
bows of the vessel, and that the breath from his mouth, when it was
thrown out into the clear frosty air, formed a smoke like to that from
the spout of a half-boiling tea-kettle.
The crew belonging to the cutter, for she was a vessel in the service of
his Majesty, King William the Third, at this time employed in protecting
his Majesty's revenue against the importation of alamodes and
lutestrings, were all down below at their breakfasts, with the exception
of the steersman and lieutenant-commandant, who now walked the
quarter-deck, if so small an extent of plank could be dignified with
such a name.
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