“Don’t laugh at me, sir! Put me in irons; punish me as much as you like; but don’t jeer at me. I can’t bear that.”
“Steady, my boy, steady!” said the skipper quietly. “You must cool down now. Why, Burnett, my lad, you had better furl up all your romantic sails and let’s talk like men. I am not going to put you in irons, I am not going to punish you. What nonsense! Why, when I was your age and just as thoughtless, if I had been placed in your position I might likely enough have tried on just such a trick. It will be a lesson for you to follow out the old proverb, ‘Look before you leap.’ You can’t see it now, but some day I have no doubt that you will feel that it was a mad idea, attempted because you didn’t know the people among whom you had been cast, nor thought it out so as to see how impossible it all was for a boy like you—a lad like you, single-handed, but with all a man’s pluck, and even unarmed, to make yourself master of my little craft. It was rather a big venture to make, my lad; don’t you think it was?”
“No, sir,” said the lad firmly. “I had something else behind me.”
“What, the belief that my lads only wanted a leader to turn against me?”
“No, sir; that I was backed up, as an officer of the Queen, by the whole power of the law.”
“Oh, I see,” said the skipper. “Yes. Exactly. That’s all very big and grand, and it might act sometimes and in some places, and especially when there are men well-armed to back it up as well; but if you had thought it out, my lad, I think you would have seen that it could have had no chance here.—Oh, that my dose, Poole? Half or full?” he continued, as he raised his hand to take a little silver mug which his son had brought.
“Only half, father,” replied the lad. “You had a full dose just before you went to sleep.”
“To be sure; so I did,” said the skipper, whose hand was trembling as he took the cup.—“It’s of no use to ask you to drink with me, Mr Burnett?”
Fitz shook his head.
“No, I suppose not,” continued the skipper; “but we are going to be good friends, all the same.”