As I stood under the shade of the verandah, admiring this sea beauty, the gig came foaming round under her stern, propelled by four oarsmen, and with a white-clad figure in the stern-sheets, and headed toward the wharf, alongside a flight of steps in which she presently ranged, and hooked on.  Then the white-clad figure in the stern-sheets rose and, leisurely climbing the steps to the level of the wharf, revealed itself as that of a man somewhat over middle height, broadly built, with hair, beard, and moustache of raven black, and a skin tanned almost to the colour of that of a mulatto by long exposure to sea-breezes and a tropical sun.  His age I roughly estimated as somewhere about forty.