'Forty-five or thereabouts. Men of that sort soon lose the reckoning of their birth. I don't allow their mothers ever enter 'em. They're always the age that suits 'em to be. But look what a life it is, sir! the iron it will put into a young 'un's hair! the kinks it'll run into a young 'un's back! All the hard life and the bad food works out through a man's pores after a few years, bows him down, and hardens in his face with a crust of years. He's a marvellous jumper that, sir. Tell ye what he did--and it astonished me--there was a horse and trap standing close beside where we were talking. He turns on a sudden and sings out, "Captain, did yer ever see this done?" and putting his feet together and clenching his fists he bent his knees, let go of the ground like and shot as a bolt, clearing the horse till you could see half the length of his own legs of blue sky 'twixt his feet and the animal's back.' He gazed up at me, blinking and grinning, and added, 'I allow, should it come to any awkward climbing jobs, we'll find that covey handy.' I lingered a little to watch the brig and the coast. The swell was coming straight out of the wide sea, but the breeze still followed fiery and splendid with the light of that land; the little ship bowed softly; the long heave under the bows did not stop her; she floated with erect spars, her yards square, the canvas breathing like human breasts as her bowsprit rose and fell; yet a glance astern showed me she was already whitening the water. At every look, the high land, purple and hard in that noontide brilliance, yielded new features. It was towering now on to Hont Bay, with a trend which made a mighty shoulder of it as it sounded towards Simon's Town and the Cape of Good Hope: the towering terraces were on our port quarter with Robben Island to starboard, and ahead was the glittering breast of the Atlantic with the sea-line hard-carved against the faint silvery blue. I looked for a sail, but nothing broke that measureless run of horizon; the junction of air and water had a wild loveliness, indescribable, thanks perhaps to the violet of the brine that washed the light azure; though the fear and mystery of beauty I found in it then doubtless came of the thought of what lay hidden from me hundreds of leagues deep beyond that slope of airy silver. Had we been a ship of ancient explorers the field of ocean could not have shown more barren than my eyes, exploring its recesses under the sharp of my hand, found it.