That jerk was accompanied by a nearly playful hop or skip from the last batten to the snowy planks of the starboard gangway. When the officer doffed his hat, though, he did so with solemn gravity, so an uninitiated observer might have doubted his first, playful theory.
Said new-come "lubber" would have seen a slim man in his early thirties, who stood three inches shy of six feet tall, one who might weigh twelve or thirteen stone; still wider in the shoulders than the waist, a man whose snow-white breeches and waist-coat lay trimly flat, still.
He wore a good, hard-finished blue wool shoregoing coat, laced with butter-yellow gilt trim on the lapels, the stand-up blue collar, the side-pocket flaps, and cuffs, with nine real gilt buttons on each wide turn-back blue lapel. A fringed gilt-lace epaulet sat upon the officer's right shoulder, too, denoting him a Post-Captain, though one of less than three years' seniority.
Under that expensive coat lay a white leather baldric on which to hang his sword. A discerning observer would have appreciated that sword, a twenty-four-inch hanger, though he would have been puzzled by the scabbard, for it was of dark blue leather, not black, and both throat and drag were of plain brass, not gilded. The hilt, though, was gilded and most ornate; the typical lion's-head pommel that swallowed the back handguard, but the front guard that swelled to protect the user's fist was pierced-steel, like a scallop shell, with a smaller second shell at the hilt's forefront.