I thought the question idle, for all my life I had lived where I could look from my window out on the harbor.
"Why, sir," I replied, "I know enough to realize that I want to follow the sea."
"To follow the sea?"
There was something in my father's eyes that I could not understand. He seemed to be dreaming, as if of voyages that he himself had made. Yet I knew he never had sailed blue water. "Well, why not?" he asked suddenly. "There was a time—"
I was too young to realize then what has come to me since: that my father's manner revealed a side of his nature that I never had known; that in his own heart was a love of adventure that he never had let me see. My sixteen years had given me a big, strong body, but no great insight, and I thought only of my own urgent desire of the moment.
"Many a boy of ten or twelve has gone to sea," I said, "and the Island
Princess will sail in a fortnight. If you were to speak to Captain
Whidden—"
My father sternly turned on me. "No son of mine shall climb through the cabin windows."
"But Captain Whidden—"
"I thought you desired to follow the sea—to ship before the mast."
"I do."