“O, no, I wouldn’t! I would soon be captain. Say, father, may I go? I want to go.”
“You would have to go on a great many voyages before you could be master of a vessel. I went to sea thirteen years before any one called me captain.”
“Well, now, may I go? Say, father, may I go?”
“The discipline is very strict,” continued the merchant. “A sailor is not allowed to stop and grumble at any orders he receives. Besides, you will have to take a very low position; you will be nothing but a boy.”
“I don’t care!” said Tom, impatiently. “May I go? That’s what I want to know!”
“There are other things you must bear in mind also,” said Mr. Newcombe; but Tom, fearing that his father was about to begin a long, uninteresting lecture, interrupted him with:
“Now, why don’t you tell me whether or not I can go? Say, father may I go?”
The merchant, however, did not immediately answer his question; and Tom, giving it up in disgust, threw himself back in his chair with the air of one who expected to listen to something very unpleasant.
“You must remember,” said his father, “that there is nothing romantic about a sailor’s life. It is all drudgery and toil from one year’s end to another; and if a man wins promotion, he does it by his own abilities. How would you like to be in a vessel that was cast away?”
Tom thought of the wreck he had seen towed into the harbor, and, for a moment, he hesitated, but it was only for a moment; for when he remembered how grand that ship looked as she started on her voyage, and thought how proud he would feel if he could only be the captain of a vessel like that, he decided that he would willingly risk the shipwreck, if that would enable him to gain the object of his ambition.