"A delicate little slip of a fellow to show such spirit!" said the old sailor, laying his hand on the flaxen hair of the boy and passing his eyes down from Ishmael's broad forehead and thin cheeks to his slender figure. "Never do for the army or navy, sir! be rejected by both upon account of physical incapacity, sir. Eh?" he continued, appealing to Mr. Middleton.
"The boy is certainly very delicate at present; but that may be the fault of his manner of living; under better regimen he may outgrow his fragility," said Mr. Middleton.
"Yes, yes, so he may; but now as I look at him, I wonder where the deuce the little fellow got his pluck from! Where did you, my little man, eh?" inquired the old sailor, turning bluffly to Ishmael.
"Indeed I don't know, sir; unless it was from George Washington and——" Ishmael was going on to enumerate his model heroes, but the commodore, who had not stopped to hear the reply, turned to Mr. Middleton again and said:
"One is accustomed to associate great courage with great size, weight, strength, and so forth!" And he drew up his own magnificent form with conscious pride.
"Indeed, I do not know why we should, then, when all nature and all history contradicts the notion! Nature shows us that the lion is braver than the elephant, and history informs us that all the great generals of the world have been little men——"
"And experience teaches us that schoolmasters are pedants!" said the old man, half vexed, half laughing; "but that is not the question. The question is how are we to reward this brave little fellow?"
"If you please, sir, I do not want any reward," said Ishmael modestly.
"Oh, yes, yes, yes; I know all about that! Your friend, Mr. Middleton, has just been telling me some of your antecedents —how you fought my two young scapegraces in defense of his fruit baskets. Wish you had been strong enough to have given hem a good thrashing. And about your finding the pocketbook, forbearing to borrow a dollar from it, though sorely tempted by want. And then about your refusing any reward for being simply honest. You see I know all about you. So I am not going to offer you money for risking your life to save my boys. But I am going to give you a start in the world, if I can. Come, now, how shall I do it?"
Ishmael hesitated, looked down and blushed.