After dinner the officer said: “It is quite clear that you won’t be able to return to the village. I think I have heard that you have no father. Is it not so?”
“Yes, he died when I was five years old. He left a little money, and John Hammond took me in and bought a boat with that and what he had saved. I was bound to stay with him until I was fourteen years old, but was soon going to leave him, for he is really too old to go out any longer.”
“Have you ever thought of going into the royal navy?”
“I have thought of it, sir, but I have not settled anything. I thought of going into the merchant navy.”
“Bah! I am surprised at a lad of spirit like you thinking of such a thing. If you have learned a lot you will, if you are steady, be sure to get on in time, and may very well become a petty officer. No lad of spirit would take to the life of a merchantman who could enter the navy. I don’t say that some of the Indiamen are not fine ships, but you would find it very hard to get a berth on one of them. Our lieutenant will be over here in a day or two, and I have no doubt that if I speak to him for you he will ship you as a boy in a fine ship.”
“How long does one ship for, sir?”
“You engage for the time that the ship is in commission, at the outside for five years; and if you find that you do not like it, at the end of that time it is open to you to choose some other berth.”
“I can enter the merchant navy then if I like?”
“Of course you could, but I don’t think that you would. On a merchantman you would be kicked and cuffed all round, whereas on a man-of-war I don’t say it would be all easy sailing, but if you were sharp and obliging things would go smoothly enough for you.”
“Well, sir, I will think it over to-night.”