Sturdy laughed.
"You'd soon have Auld Reikie using language if you did. It is while lying at anchor like this that sailors sleep most lightly, and Reikie is nothing if not a sailor. Perhaps if you did much of the tramping business, he'd come up the hatch and shy a boot at you."
"Shy his boot at me! Would he, sir?"
"Well, I didn't say his boot, but a boot. I daresay Auld Reikie would just as soon shy somebody else's, because when one does this sort of thing the boot nearly always flies overboard.—But come and sit down here on the skylight. In keeping your watch, you know, the main thing is to keep your weather eye lifting, and to note what goes on high and low, fore and aft. See?"
"Yes."
"Well, now, let us yarn. Tell me about your brothers and sisters, mother and aunts, and—oh, but of course you are far too young to have a sweetheart."
"Nearly fourteen," said Jack proudly. "Yes, I have a sweetheart—just one."
"Well, one at a time is all I ever have—in the same port, I mean. And what is your young lady's name?"
"She is the first young lady ever I spoke to in all my life. She is my cousin, eight years old, and her name is Tottie Morgan. Tottie isn't her baptismal name, you know, only her brothers and sisters call her that. Her mother calls her Violet."
"And are you going to marry her?"