“Yes, Mr White,” I answered. “I shall be out of my time on the sixteenth of next month.”
“Just so; just so. I thought that they would have about a month to run; but have been too busy the last few days to ascertain the precise date. Well, George,” he continued, “I have come to the conclusion that the Weymouth must be laid up, for the present at all events. Her capture the other night has opened my eyes more completely than they have ever been opened before, to the risk of working an unarmed ship during war-time. Were I to continue to do so, and the ship should happen to be captured, it would go far toward ruining me; and I am too old to endure such a loss; so I have made up my mind to lay up the Weymouth while the war lasts. But there is good money to be made, even in war-time, if a man goes the right way to work. Privateering is a very profitable business when it can be carried on successfully; and success depends as much as anything upon the kind of men employed. I have been having a chat with Captain Winter upon the subject, with the result that I have purchased the schooner that they are now finishing off in Martin’s building-yard; and I intend to fit her out as a privateer; that being the kind of work, in fact, that she has been especially built for. Captain Winter will have the command of her, of course, with Mr Lovell as chief mate; and, George, upon the captain’s very strong recommendation, I have determined to offer you the berth of second mate. It will take more than a month to complete the schooner and fit her for sea; and by that time your indentures will have expired. Captain Winter gives you a most excellent character, and has recommended you for the berth; and from what I have seen of you, my lad, I have come to the conclusion that I shall not go very far wrong in giving it to you. Nay, you owe me no thanks, boy; you have earned the refusal of the offer by your steadiness and industry, so it is yours, freely, if you like to have it. I do not want you to make up your mind and answer me yea or nay upon the spur of the moment; take a little time to consider the matter if you like, and let me know by the end of the week.”
I needed no time for consideration, however; the offer was altogether too good and advantageous in every way to be left hanging in the balance, as it were. I therefore thankfully accepted it on the spot, and the question of pay and prize-money then being gone into and settled upon a very satisfactory basis, so far as I was concerned, I took my leave, and hurried off home to acquaint my relatives with my good fortune.
Now the reader will have gathered from the foregoing that at the period of the opening of my story I was a sailor, and quite a young man; and probably I need say but little more to complete the acquaintance thus begun.
My name is George Bowen, and I was the only son of my father, Captain Bowen, who was believed to have been drowned at sea—his ship never having been heard of after leaving England for the South Seas—when I was a little chap of only six years old. My sister Dora was born just about the time that it was supposed my father must have perished, and a year later my poor mother died, broken-hearted at the loss of a husband that she positively idolised. Thus, we two—Dora and I—were left orphans at a very early age, and were forthwith taken into the motherly care of Aunt Sophie, who had no children of her own. Poor Aunt Sophie! I am afraid I led her a terrible life; for I was, almost from my birth, a big, strong, high-spirited boy, impatient of control, and resolute to have my own way. But Dora—ah! Dora, with her sweet, docile disposition, made ample amends for all my shortcomings, and in the end, by her gentle persuasiveness, did much to subdue my rebellious spirit and render me amenable to domestic discipline.
We were both exceptionally well educated, as education went then; for Uncle Jack—Aunt Sophie’s husband—was a clever, long-headed fellow, who believed that it was not possible for a man to know too much; so Dora, in addition to receiving a sound English education, was taught French, music, and, in fact, the general run of what was then known as “accomplishments”, while I, in addition also to a good sound English education, was taught French, Latin, and mathematics, including geometry, algebra, and trigonometry. I was allowed to continue at school until my fourteenth birthday, when, in consequence of my strong predilection for the sea as a profession, I was apprenticed by Uncle Jack to Mr White for a period of seven years. The first year of my apprenticeship was spent aboard a collier, trading between the Tyne and Weymouth; then I was transferred for three years to a Levant trader; and finally I was promoted—as I considered it—into the Weymouth, West Indiaman, which brings me back to the point from whence this bit of explanation started.
The modest cottage which I called home was situated in the picturesque little village of Wyke; I had therefore a walk of some two miles before me when I left Mr White’s office; and as I sped along the road I beguiled the way by building the most magnificent of castles in the air. After the brief peace of Amiens, war had again broken out in May of the preceding year; and everybody was of opinion that the struggle which then commenced was destined to be of quite exceptional duration and severity. Then, again, it was well-known that Spain was only waiting for a sufficiently plausible pretext to declare war against us; and that pretext, it was believed, would be found in the capture by a British squadron of the three Spanish treasure-ships Medea, Clara, and Fama, news of which had just reached England. All this was of course simply disastrous from a commercial point of view; but for navy men and privateersmen it opened up a long vista of opportunities to win both distinction and fortune; for it gave us the marine commerce of three rich and powerful nations—France, Holland, and Spain—as a lawful prey. Fortunes of almost fabulous magnitude had been made by lucky privateersmen during the last war; and was there not even then living in Weymouth the heroic Captain Tizard, who had captured a Spanish Plate ship and sailed into Plymouth Sound with his prize in tow, and a massive gold candlestick glittering at each mast-head? And if others had done such things, why not we? I knew Captain Winter for a man who not only had every detail of his profession at his fingers’ ends, but who also combined the highest courage with the nicest discretion and a subtlety of resource that had already served us in good stead on more than one occasion. Then there was Robert Lovell, our chief mate, late of the Weymouth. He, like the captain, was a finished seaman; bold as a lion; and knew exactly how to deal with a crew, encouraging those who did their duty, while the idle skulkers found in him a terrible enemy.
Our late second mate—a man named Penrose, who had only been one voyage with us—had not given the skipper satisfaction; he had proved to be untrustworthy, overbearing, obstinate, unscrupulous, and altogether objectionable, so I was not at all surprised to find that he had been passed over; but it was a surprise, and a most agreeable one, too, to learn that the captain had recommended me in place of him. It was a responsible post, more so even than that of second mate in an ordinary trader; but I had no fear of myself, and was quite determined to leave nothing undone to justify “the old man’s” recommendation.
Thus pondering, I soon found myself at home. Truth compels me to admit that I was greatly disappointed with the reception that my good news met with at the hands of Aunt Sophie and Dora. Instead of congratulating me they wept! wept because I was so soon to leave them again, and because of the dangerous character of my new berth! They declared their conviction that I should be killed by the first enemy that we might happen to fall in with; or, if I were fortunate enough to escape death, that I should be brought home to them a miserable, helpless cripple, minus a leg and arm or two, and all that Uncle Jack and I could say failed to shake that conviction. Dora even went so far as to endeavour to coax me to decline the berth; and only desisted upon my representation that, were I so foolish as to do so, I should inevitably be snapped up by the press-gang. That, and the indisputable fact—which they appeared to have forgotten—that there were at least a dozen men in Weymouth alone who had gone through the whole of the last war without receiving so much as a scratch, brought them to regard the matter somewhat more resignedly; and at length, when they had all but cried themselves blind, Uncle Jack’s cheery and sanguine arguments began to tell upon them so effectually, that they dried their tears and announced their determination to hope for the best.
Strange to say, although I had been at home six days, I had hitherto been so busy, running about with Dora and calling upon a rather numerous circle of friends that, up to the time of receiving Mr White’s offer, I had not found time to do more than just become aware of the fact that Mr Joe Martin, our local ship-builder, happened to have a very fine craft upon the stocks, well advanced toward completion. Now, however, that it had come about that I was to serve on board that same craft as “dickey”, I was all impatience to see what she was like; so, the next day happening to be fine, I set off, the first thing after breakfast, and, walking in to Weymouth, made my way straight to the shipyard. As I reached the gates I caught my first near view of her, and stood entranced. She was planked right up to her covering-board, and while one strong gang of workmen was busy fitting her bulwarks, another gang, upon stages, was hard at work caulking her, a third gang under her bottom, having apparently just commenced the operation of coppering. She was, consequently, not presented to my view in her most attractive guise; nevertheless, she being entirely out of the water, I was able to note all her beauties, and I fell in love with her on the spot. She was a much bigger craft than I had expected to see; measuring, as I was presently told, exactly two hundred and sixty-six tons. She was very shallow, her load-line being only seven feet above the lowest part of her unusually deep keel, but this was more than counterbalanced by her extraordinary breadth of beam. She had a very long, flat floor, and, despite her excessive beam, her lines were the finest that I had ever seen—and that is saying a great deal, for I had seen in the West Indies some of the most speedy slavers afloat. Altogether she impressed me as a vessel likely to prove not only phenomenally fast but also a perfect sea-boat. She was pierced for four guns of a side, with two stern-chasers; and there was a pivot on her forecastle for a long eighteen-pounder; she would therefore carry an armament formidable enough to enable us to go anywhere and do anything—in reason. Having thoroughly inspected her from outside, and gone down under her bottom, I next made my way on board, and went down below to have a look at her interior accommodation. This I found to be everything that could possibly be desired; the arrangements had evidently been carefully planned with a view to securing to the crew the maximum possible amount of comfort; the cabins were large, and as lofty as the shallow depth of the vessel would allow; there was every convenience in the state-rooms in the shape of drawers, lockers, sofas, folding tables, shelves, cupboards, and so on; and the living quarters were not only light, airy, and comfortable, but were being finished off with great taste and considerable pretensions to luxury. While I was prowling about below I encountered Harry Martin, the son of the builder, who told me that Mr White, when completing the purchase of the vessel, had given instructions that no reasonable expense was to be spared in making the craft as thoroughly suitable as possible for the service of a privateer. I spent fully two hours on board, prying into every nook and cranny of the vessel, and making myself thoroughly familiar with the whole of her interior arrangements, and then left, well satisfied with my prospects as second mate of so smart and comfortable a craft.