Jack took the wheel, and as he did so a last gust from the island staggered the sloop, sending white water along her lee rail, plucking Jack’s hat from his head and streaming his bright yellow hair away to the south-south-west. The master leapt after the hat, snatched it from the seaman who had rescued it in the hammock-netting and solicitously wiping the cockade with his handkerchief he stood by Jack’s side, holding it with both hands. ‘Old Sodom and Gomorrah is sweet on Goldilocks,’ murmured John Lane, foretopman, to his friend Thomas Gross: Thomas winked his eye and jerked his head, but without any appearance of censure – they were concerned with the phenomenon, not with any moral judgment. ‘Well, I hope he don’t take it out of us too much, that’s all, mate,’ he replied.
--Master and Commander
