“Yes, you would, and perhaps your best wouldn’t be thought much of and you’d get a rope’s ending, or a kick or a cuff into the bargain, eh?”
I looked at him. “It seems to me, sir, that everybody thinks that all boys are good for is to be kicked and cuffed, my old grandfather used to say ‘when you meet a lad thrash him, if he doesn’t deserve it then he soon will.’”
They both laughed heartily.
“Was he a sailor?” Captain Crosbie asked.
“No sir, he was a farmer.”
“Well he ought to have been, he understood human nature as regards boys.”
I thought differently but said nothing.
After a few more questions Captain Crosbie engaged me as ordinary seaman at twenty-five shillings per month, and I was to join the ship the next morning. I thanked him heartily and wishing them both good day left the room. What a man I felt as I wended my way home, what castles I built in the air, I was to be a sailor and some day a captain, of that I felt sure, so full of hope is youth, and it is well that it should be so, for has not one of our poets said:—
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,