It would have pleased the surliest old ship captain who ever peeped over a binnacle edge, to have two such listeners as young Leon and Doug. How their bright eyes had sparkled, to be sure, as some skipper newly or lately arrived from foreign lands sat telling them of all the wonders he had seen! And how they had longed to sail away to summer seas, and behold for themselves wonders on a larger scale than any they could meet with among the mountains of their own country!
It was thus perhaps that a taste for wandering and a fondness for the sea had been engendered early in the breast of each of the boys.
It was this, I’m sure, that caused them once to write home to their respective parents, informing them that the 250-ton brig, Highland Donald, was to sail in a fortnight for Norway and the Baltic, and that the skipper had offered to take them if they could obtain permission.
Permission had been granted, and having been provided with suits of rough warm clothing, they had embarked one fine spring morning, and sailed away for the cold north.
Now, if any young reader thinks he would like to be a sailor, and has been led to believe, from books or otherwise, that a seaman’s life is one of unmitigated pleasure and general jollity, let him induce his father or guardian to place him on a grain, tar, or timber ship bound for Norway or the Baltic. If, after a month or two of such a life, he still believes in the joys of a seaman’s existence, let him join the merchant service forthwith, but I fear there are few lads who would come up smiling after so severe a test.
Our heroes, however, had stood this test, though they had roughed it in no ordinary way. True, they had been all but shipwrecked on an iron-bound coast, where no boat could have lived a minute; they had been in gale of wind after gale of wind; their provisions and fare had been of the coarsest; their beds were always wet or damp, and sometimes the cold had been intense, depressing, benumbing to both mind and body.
But their long voyage north had made sailors of them for all that, and that is saying a very great deal. It had proved of what mettle they were made, and given them confidence in themselves.
This is the first voyage, then, in which Leonard and Douglas have trod the deck as officers, and I do not deny that both are just a trifle proud of their position, although they feel fully the weight of responsibility the buttons have brought. They certainly took but little pride in the uniform which they wore, as some weak-minded lads would have done, albeit handsome they both had looked, as they sat at table on that last night at Grayling House. So, at all events, Leonard’s mother and poor Effie thought. The latter had done little else but cry all the day, that is, whenever she could get a chance of doing so unseen. This was the second time only that her brother and brother’s friend had been home since they went to sea for good. They had stayed at home for a whole month, and now were bound on a perilous cruise indeed, sailing far away to Arctic seas, Captain Blunt’s ship having been chosen to take stores and provisions out to Greenland for vessels employed in finding out the North-West Passage.
Something had seemed to whisper to Effie that she would never see her darling brother again. So no wonder her heart had been sad, and her eyes red with weeping, as our heroes left; or that a gloom, like the gloom of the grave, had fallen on Grayling House, as soon as they were gone.