No. 6 was halfway down when a woman called up to the boat deck, "we’ve only one seaman in the boat! "

"any seamen there? " lightoller asked the people on deck.

"if you like, i will go," called a voice from the crowd.

"are you a seaman? "

"i am a yachtsman."

"if you’re sailor enough to get out on that fall, you can go down." major arthur godfrey peuchen—vice-commodore of the royal canadian yacht club—swung himself out on the forward fall and slid down into the boat. he was the only male passenger lightoller allowed in a boat that night.

what does the reader learn about peuchen from his actions in the excerpt?

he is an experienced seaman.
he is thinking only of himself.
his family is already in a lifeboat.
his main desire is to the others in the boat.

What the reader learns about Peuchen from his actions in the excerpt above is that:

He is an experienced seaman.

He was not afraid to swing and slide himself towards the boat despite the distance between the boat and his location which indicates that he knew what he was doing.

the

wordsworth tends to see nature as 'out there'; a presence which surrounds humans, and contributes to human life, but is different from humans. if you look at a typical wordsworth poem (there was a boy, ye knew him well ye rocks) - wordsworth talks about nature as something that needs to be learned about and understood, nature is different from us.  

if you look at a byron poem (the isles of greece is a good one) - byron looks at nature mainly for what it already means to man. wordsworth will look at a landscape and see the mountains, trees, valleys, and rivers as almost spiritual presences - wordsworth wants to get to know nature.  

byron will look at the same landscape and he will want to know who lives there, what are the villages? are there any farms or mines, is there some history?  

wordsworth looks at nature for what it is; byron is forever asking what it means.  

wordsworth thinks that humans are part of nature; byron thinks that nature is part of being human