“Have you a father living?”
“No, sir,” I answered.
“A mother?” he asked, his voice a little less stern.
“Yes, sir, and two sisters.”
“Well, you go straight home from here. I have already sent your mother word. I hope she will have sense enough to give you the best thrashing you have ever had in your life, and tell her from me to send you to sea. What you want is work, and plenty of it, and remember this—if ever I catch you round these docks again I’ll lock you up.”
When I reached home I found a warm welcome awaiting me, but not the same one as that given to the “Prodigal Son,” and I was glad enough to escape to my bedroom, feeling that I had got more than I deserved.
The next morning my mother said I need not go to school any more. “You shall go to sea,” she said, “so get your cap and take this note to Captain Watson, he was an old friend of your father’s, and I sincerely hope he will get you on a ship, or there will be nothing but unpleasantness before you for a while, they have not found Harry Law’s body and his people are in a dreadful state and blame you, which is quite natural.”
I made no answer, knowing that it was true, and feeling quite determined in my own mind that if Captain Watson could do nothing for me I would go and ask on every ship in the docks until I was successful.
When I arrived at Captain Watson’s house at Seaforth, there was no mistaking it, standing as it did in a small garden full of flowers, with a tiny grass plat facing the river, a flagstaff from which a Union Jack was fluttering in the breeze, and over the doorway in white lettering “The Mariners’ Rest” was painted.
On my asking for the Captain I was at once taken to him. After reading the letter the old sea-dog gazed at me out of the corner of his eye, then he laid his long pipe on the table.