Rockbound

When David was eighteen he heard from some of the Outpost fishermen
that his great-uncle Uriah, the rich king of Rockbound, wanted a
fisherman. Here was his opportunity; for weeks, in fact, ever
since old Gershom Born had talked with him, he had wondered how he
would get up courage to face the old man and tell him what he knew.
In his yellow dory he set out from Big Outpost one morning of early
summer. The sea was apparently oil-smooth, but a ground swell
always runs among these outer islands, and the flood tide was
against him. He tugged hard at the splintered spruce oars, which
had seen two years service on the Grand Banks, lifting his elbows
at the finish of his stroke in a manner peculiar to the Outposters.
With slack water he gave himself a spell and drifted idly for a
little, a yellow speck on an immense floor of blue.

He looked up at the sky half-conscious of his insignificance in the
universe above him; then, feeling cold water about his feet,
reflected that only a half inch of leaky spruce marked him off from
the watery world below, where shadowy albercore dodged in and out
between streamers of waving kelp. The Outposts and Rockbound, now
almost equidistant, were dimmed and softened by summer mists. As
he sat there resting, his oars half drawn in through the thole
pins, he looked at first glance like a hundred other young
fishermen along the coast. He was barefoot and clad only in a pair
of ragged brown trousers and a faded blue buttonless shirt that
fell open at the neck to reveal a bronzed and hairy chest. His
hands that clutched the oars were calloused and split, and scarred
with marks of salt-water boils and burns from running hand line or
halliard. Sly but kind gray eyes shone out through narrow slits
overhung with thick eyebrows; a hawk's nose gave his face a touch
of fierceness; his head was crowned with a thick brown mop of
uncombed hair. He was not unhandsome, and when he smiled the
corners of his mouth twitched and drooped.