Master Jonathan, you will take particular notice of Mr.Lennox.He is well grown and he appears intelligent, does he not ?" The old clerk blinked again, and then his appraising eyes swept over Robert.
"'Twould be hard to find a nobler youth," he said.
"I thought you would say so, and now lead us, without further delay, to Master Hardy." "Who is it who demands to be led to me ?" thundered a voice from the rear of the house.

"I seem to know that voice! Ah, it's Willet! Good old Willet! Honest Dave, who wields the sharpest sword in North America!" A tall, heavy man lunged forward.

"Lunged" was the word that described it to Robert, and his impetuous motion was due to the sight of Willet, whom he grasped by both hands, shaking them with a vigor that would have caused pain in one less powerful than the hunter, and as he shook them he uttered exclamations, many of them bordering upon oaths and all of them pertaining to the sea.
Robert's eyes had grown used to the half light of the hall, and he took particular notice of Master Benjamin Hardy who was destined to become an important figure in his life, although he did not then dream of it.

He saw a tall man of middle age, built very powerfully, his face burnt almost the color of an Indian's by the winds and suns of many seas.

But his hair was thick and long and the eyes shining in the face, made dark by the weather, were an intensely bright blue.