They were a wild looking lot.

Paul noticed the women particularly.

They looked strong and rosy.

They all wore long cloaks with a hood covering the head, and their feet were naked and as red as a pigeon's.

From the expressions he overheard, he concluded that the coast-guard man had drawn on his imagination in explaining the stranger's appearance in the station.
"Did he railly swim from New York ?" he heard time and again.
"Oh, thin he's not human if he could do that," and many other exclamations of like nature greeted the astonished Paul as he drowsily turned out of the bunk.
The coast-guard man now approached and driving the curious villagers out of the station, he invited him to breakfast in a little tavern across the way.