I gladly agreed to render him all the assistance in my power. I thought if there was very much more of the same style he had been quoting there ought to have been a shipwreck or two up and down in that piece of his, and that I should be something like a Captain Boyton’s swimming-dress to this poor struggling author over head and ears in a tempestuous ocean of his own manufacture.
I met him by appointment, therefore, next day at the stage-door of the theatre where he was acting, and where he had promised to procure me an opening as extra or supernumerary. He got me on easily enough, and my duties, though they made me precious hot, did not require very much genius. I was on my mettle, and wanted to reflect as much credit as possible upon my new friend for the introduction, so I fought away and took forlorn hopes like one o’clock; and the prompter was good enough to say that I evidently had something in me, and would do better presently, if I stuck to it.
After a night or two they found I was an active kind of fellow, and had the full use of my arms and legs, so they introduced a bit of rope climbing on my account, and worked in another bit specially, where I was shot down from among the rigging, with a round of applause every night.
In the daytime, Mr Jones and I talked the nautical drama, and I set his “lee-scuppers” right for him, and got him to make things generally a little bit more like the right thing.
At the end of a fortnight, however, I was able to get at my friends, and through them to stop the mouths of the angry coffin-ship owners; and so I had no more occasion to fight shy of the seaports, and resolved to go to sea again.
If it had not been for that, Mr Jones would have tried to get me into the company he was just then joining, and I should have figured in one or two small parts in the great drama.
However, instead of that, I bid him good-by, and thanked him, and wished him every success, and went my way, leaving him to go his.
I only went for a short cruise round the coast of Spain, but I met with the pleasantest mates—bar present company, of course—I ever remember sailing with. We all of us got to be like brothers before the ship touched land again in England, and as another vessel was in want of hands, and about to sail in two or three days for the China Sea, I and five others agreed to stick together and join. I took two days just to drop down and see my friends, and the next day we met together and had a bit of a spree, agreeing to spend our last night at the play. I had told my messmates about Jones, and how I had been on the stage myself, so they looked up to me as rather an authority, as you may suppose, and passing me over the play-bill the waiter had brought us, asked if I knew anything of the piece they were playing.
Know anything, indeed!