“No matter, if they 'll agree to take me,” muttered he to himself.
The craft was “hauling short” on the anchor as Tony came alongside and learned that she was about to sail for Leghorn, having failed in obtaining a freight at Naples; and as by an accident one of the crew had been left on shore, the skipper was too willing to take Tony so far, though looking, as he remarked, far more like a swell landsman than an ordinary seaman.
Once outside the bay, and bowling along with a smart breeze and a calm sea, the rushing water making pleasant music at the bow, while the helm left a long white track some feet down beneath the surface, Tony felt, what so many others have felt, the glorious elation of being at sea. How many a care “blue water” can assuage, how many a sorrow is made bearable by the fresh breeze that strains the cordage, and the laughing waves we cleave through so fast!
A few very eventful days, in which Tony's life passed less like reality than a mere dream, brought them to Leghorn; and the skipper, who had taken a sort of rough liking to the “Swell,” as he still called him, offered to take him on to Liverpool, if he were willing to enter himself regularly on the ship's books as one of the crew.
“I am quite ready,” said Tony, who thought by the time the brief voyage was completed he should have picked up enough of the practice and the look of a sailor to obtain another employment easily.
Accompanied by the skipper, he soon found himself in the consul's office, crowded with sailors and other maritime folk, busily engaged in preferring complaints or making excuses, or as eagerly asking for relief against this or that exaction on the part of the foreign government.
The consul sat smoking his cigar with a friend at a window, little heeding the turmoil around, but leaving the charge of the various difficulties to his clerks, who only referred to him on some special occasions.
“Here's a man, sir,” cried one of the clerks, “who wishes to be entered in the ship's books under an assumed name. I have told him it can't be done.”
“Why does he ask it? Is he a runaway convict?” asked the consul.
“Not exactly,” said Tony, laughing; “but as I have not been brought up before the mast, and I have a few relatives who might not like to hear of me in that station—”