"Impossible, boy; you must go with us to Spain. And here comes a gentleman to speak with you."
An officer in military uniform approached, and the boy touched his cap. With the skipper as interpreter the major made George an offer of service under him.
"We want fellows of your sort," he said. "And there will be brave doings in Spain, and plenty of good pay, and glory to be won. Besides, you will be fighting under one of your own countrymen, most likely Sir George Rooke himself. Say the word, my good lad."
George's face flushed.
"I have always wanted to be a soldier, sir," he stammered.
"Of course you have, my lad. Then we may take it that the matter is settled. Good luck go with you, my boy."
Here then was George Fairburn, who ought to have been driving a quill in the office of Mr. Allan, shipping merchant, of London, sailing to join the allied forces in Spain, and to fight against the French. His head swam with the thought of it.
But what of George's friends at home all this long while? When Fairburn learnt that his brig had not arrived in port, though she had been spoken in Boston Deeps by another collier which was returning to the Tyne, his heart misgave him. There had been a bad storm on the coast; it seemed only too likely that the Ouseburn Lassie had gone down in it! When week after week passed without news it seemed more and more likely that the vessel had foundered in the gale. News of captures by French privateers usually filtered through sooner or later; but for long there were no tidings of the Ouseburn Lassie. The Blacketts did what they could to console the bereaved parents, but father and mother would not be comforted. At length, months afterwards, they learnt in a casual way that a collier had been captured off Yarmouth by a French privateer, about the time the Ouseburn Lassie was making her trip; at least that was the construction the Yarmouth salts who saw the affair from the shore put upon the movements of the two vessels. So a ray of hope came to Fairburn and his wife.
"The lad will be somewhere in a French prison," the father said, "and some day he will be set free and come home to us again."
The spring of 1703 brought Matthew Blackett's seventeenth birthday, and with it an ensign's commission in a well-reputed regiment of foot. He already stood six feet one in his stockings, and mighty proud he felt when his lanky figure was clothed in his gay uniform.