Dappa, wearing a fastidious and disgusted look, threads the hook out through the missing window-pane and catches the dangling pirate-rope, then draws it inside the cabin and severs it with a smart swing of his cutlass. 'Lift your head toward the horizon, Cap'n, and behold the flotilla of coasting craft – sloops and topsail schooners, and a ketch – that is forming up there in Plymouth Bay. Half a dozen or more vessels. Strange information glancing from one to the next embodied in pennants, guns, and flashes of sunlight.'