I was a keen sportsman of a sort, an old-experienced fisher, a fair shot with gun and rifle, and in my hillcraft I might well stand comparison with most men.

Jack, at nineteen, twenty, had an unambiguous understanding of what it meant to win, there was none of that theoretical, wifty new-age stuff for him; […]

Shy, iridescent, coltish, pelvically anfractuous, amply busted, given to diffident movements

Things began breaking bad for him when his parents died.