“No,” said he, smiling.
“Them hands of yours might do something in the caboose, but they ain't much like reefing and clewing topsails. Won't suit me.” And, thus discouraged, he went on from one craft to the other, surprised and mortified to discover that one of the resources he had often pictured to his mind in the hours of despondency was just as remote, just as much above him, as any of the various callings his friends had set before him.
“Not able to be even a sailor! Not fit to serve before the mast! Well, perhaps I can carry a musket; but for that I must return to England.”
He fell to thinking of this new scheme, but without any of that hope that had so often colored his projects. He owed the service a grudge. His father had not been fairly treated in it So, at least, from his very childhood, had his mother taught him to believe, and, in consequence, vehemently opposed all his plans to obtain a commission. Hard necessity, however, left no room for mere scruples; something he must do, and that something was narrowed to the one single career of a soldier.
He was practical enough in a certain sense, and he soon resolved on his line of action; he would reserve just so much as would carry him back to England, and remit the remainder of what he had to his mother.
This would amount to nigh eighty pounds,—a very considerable sum to one whose life was as inexpensive as hers. The real difficulty was how to reconcile her to the thought of his fallen condition, and the hardships she would inevitably associate in her mind with his future life. “Ain't I lucky,” cried he in his bitterness, and trying to make it seem like a consolation,—“ain't I lucky, that, except my poor dear mother, I have not one other in the whole world to care what comes to me,—none other to console, none other before whom I need plead or excuse myself! My failure or my disgrace are not to spread a widecast sorrow. They will only darken one fireside, and one figure in the corner of it.”
His heart was full of Alice all the while, but he was too proud to utter her name even to himself. To have made a resolve, however, seemed to rally his courage again; and when the boatman asked him where he should go next, he was so far away in his thoughts that he had some difficulty to remember what he had been actually engaged in.
“Whereto?”
“Well, I can't well tell you,” said he, laughing. “Isn't that schooner English,—that one getting underway yonder? Shove me aboard of her.”
“She's outward bound, sir.”