This sounded pleasantly practical to me, and I was surprised and gratified to learn that he had mastered the theoretical side of navigation and could, as he said, “pass the old Board of Trade exams, with one hand tied behind him.”
I encouraged the notion and told him I had no doubt of getting the old trouble with the police cancelled by some of my influential friends on the grounds of lapse of time, youthful indiscretion and subsequent good behaviour.
He laughed at the last clause in a way that made me anxious.
“Well,” he said, “they know nothing about me over here.”
“Then you can go to sea in your own name and in a decent capacity.”
“Yes,” he drawled satirically, “as Third Officer on a P. & O. I suppose, showing ladies round the ship, putting on a boiled shirt and company manners for dinner. No. I’m afraid I should be no better at that than the squire business.”
“But there must be a start of some sort.”
“Not that sort. You people who stop at home see life as if it was half a dozen sets of railway lines, and a man must run on one or the other. It isn’t like that at all. If a man just dives in as he would into the sea, he can swim, he can live. There’s always something to eat. Making money is only the stake on the game, but the game is played for its own sake. All the duffers are losers, and if you’re not a duffer you win. Then you can come out of it and be as respectable as you like. You will at least have your own memories to live on.”
“It’s a bit vague,” I said, deliberately unmoved by his eloquence.
“To be precise, then, my game is going to be trade. When I’ve got my master’s certificate I mean to be master and part owner of a little trading brigantine out East. I’ve studied the thing and I know the business. It’s the life I like and understand, and there’s pots of money in it when you know the ropes, and the right people. I’m not talking any story-book rot. There are commodities out there that you can trade best in in small boats. Little cargoes of high value. Things people know nothing about at home.”