“Well, my boy, yes, of course.”
“I wish you wouldn’t, father. It’s too late now to be planning and altering, and that sort of thing.”
“Yes, please, Captain Reed,” cried Fitz excitedly. “It’s like lessons at school. We ought to know what we’ve got to do by now, and learning at the last minute won’t do a bit of good. If we succeed we succeed, and if we fail we fail.”
“Do you know what a big writer said, my boy, when one of his characters was going off upon an expedition?”
“No, sir,” said Fitz.
“Good luck to you, perhaps,” said Poole, laughing, though the laugh was not cheery.
“No, my lad,” said the skipper. “I have not been much of a reader, and I’m not very good at remembering wise people’s sayings, but he said to the young fellow when he talked as you did about failing, ‘In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as fail,’ which I suppose was a fine way of saying, Go and do what you have got to do, and never think of not succeeding. You’re not going to fail. You mustn’t. There’s too much hanging to it, my boys; and now I quite agree with you that we’ll let things go as they are.”