Driven to Bay, Volume I by Florence Marryat

The newly-appointed officers were on board the _Pandora_. Abel Coffin was the name of the chief officer. He was a short, broad built man, with a bullet head and square shoulders. Peeping out from beneath his bushy brows were two small black eyes, which winked and blinked, and were apparently never at rest, except when in the arms of Morpheus. His nose was inclined to be celestial, broad and unshapely, and of rather a rubicund tint that corresponded with the tips of his large ears; but whether it arose from the free use of stimulants, or the biting northerly winds of the Atlantic Ocean, it was difficult to say. A strong set of teeth, discoloured by tobacco, were firmly set in his jaw, and covered by a pair of thick lips. A profusion of coarse, wiry hair encircled his face, to which the absence of a moustache gave a dogged appearance. There was a ponderous look altogether about the man. He was not corpulent, but his bones were large, and sinews took the place of flesh. In point of fact, Abel Coffin was exceedingly powerful, and capable of enduring great fatigue. He was a smart man, too; the school in which he had been reared being a severe one, but it had turned him out every inch a sailor.

When quite a lad he had been apprenticed by his father to a Bostonian, which carried timber between Liverpool and the States. In this old tub -- which boasted a jackass rig -- which took two hands to steer her in an ordinary seven-knot breeze, and whose windmill pump was always required to be kept upon the move, Abel Coffin had gone in at the hawse holes and out at the cabin windows. And doubtless he would have remained in her for ever had she not been so battered about after she had jumped and thrashed her way into a nasty cross sea, that, after having been towed into the Mersey by a compassionate tug, it was decided that she should be broken up as unsafe to make another trip across the ‘duck pond. ' So he had come up to London, and during his wanderings about the docks in search of an outward bounder, had encountered the captain of the _Pandora_, and on producing his tin case of mildewed certificates and discharges, had been duly installed as mate. He was a rough, generous, and good-hearted fellow -- a trifle severe, but just and honest, and always to be found at his post when duty required it. On board the old wooden barge he had been accustomed to hear the orders bawled out, and usually accompanied by foul oaths -- his only companions had been his mate and boatswain -- and his food coarse and unpalatable.