“Tom, I have noticed that you don’t admire your duties, so I have concluded to make a sort of supercargo of you.”
“Have you, captain?” exclaimed Tom, very eagerly.
“Then I needn’t saw wood, or make up the bunks, or black your boots?”
“No, if you suit me, Bob will have to do that work.”
Tom was overjoyed to hear this, for, as we have already said, he cordially disliked Bob, and had often wished that he could see “how he would look sawing wood and blacking boots.” Besides, Bob had, of late, rather looked down upon Tom as a “land-lubber,” which made the latter very angry; and he was glad indeed that he was to be placed in a position where he could pay Bob back in his own coin. Another idea occurred to him. He knew that a supercargo was quite an important personage on board a vessel, and perhaps, Tom imagined, he might have authority enough to make Bob black his boots. The bare thought that he would thus be able to settle up all old scores, almost made him beside himself.
“I always wanted to be a supercargo,” said Tom; “and I think that’s just what I was cut out for. I know that I’ll suit you.”
“Well, then,” said the captain, going to his table and picking up several sheets of paper, “let us begin work at once. Here are the bills for some goods I bought a few days ago, and, as I want to go ashore and settle up all our accounts, I wish you would add up these figures and see if the amounts are correct.”
These words of the captain were so many death-blows to all Tom’s hopes. He walked up to the table and glanced over the bills, one after the other, but the sight of those long columns of figures was too much for him.
“O, captain, I can’t add up all these figures,” said he. “There’s too many of them. It would take me all day. I didn’t know that supercargoes had to do such work as this.”