Mr. Vetch had warned me against confiding in strangers; but there was something so honest in the old seaman's look that I, who have rarely been wrong in my instinctive judgment of men, determined to trust him, and told him so much of my story as I thought necessary.
The result was that he took me under his wing, so to speak. He spent the whole morning with me, explaining to me the differences in build and rig between the vessels lying there, telling me a great deal about the duties of a seaman and the ways of life at sea. He counseled me very earnestly to give up my design and seek an employment on shore.
"Sea life bean't for the likes of you," he said. "I don't know nothing about lawyers, saving them as they call sea lawyers, and they're rogues; but you'd better be a land lawyer than go to sea. 'Tis all very well for them as begin as officers, but for the men the life bean't fit for a dog. Aboard ship you'd meet some very rough company--very rough indeed. I don't pretend to be better nor most, but there be some terrible bad ones at sea. Of course it depends mostly on the skipper, but even where the skipper's a good 'un--and there be good and bad--he can't have his eyes everywhere, and I've knowed youngsters so bad used on board that they'd sooner ha' bin dead. Not but what you mightn't stand a chance, being a big fellow of your inches."
What the old fellow said did not in the least shake my resolution. The only effect of it was to turn my inclination rather in favor of the merchant service than the king's navy, to which I had inclined hitherto. In a king's ship I might certainly share in some fighting, which has ever great attractions to a healthy boy; but then I should have little chance of seeing the world unless specially favored by circumstances, for the ship might be kept cruising about, looking for the French who never came. Whereas in a merchant ship I might see India, and even China, and my new friend told me fine stories of the fortunes to be made in those distant parts by the lucky ones, besides which I felt a longing to see strange and far-off lands and peoples for the mere pleasure of it. To take service with an East Indiaman most hit my fancy, and when the sailor told me that London and Southampton were the ports for the East India trade, I began to think of working my passage to one or the other of them.
John Woodrow, as he was named, advised me not to be in a hurry, and when I explained that my little stock of money would be exhausted in a few days by the charges at the inn where I had put up, he recommended me to a widow living towards Clifton, who would give me board and lodging for a more modest sum. My anxieties on this score being removed, I resolved to follow Woodrow's advice, and not be in too great haste to take my first plunge. He promised to let me know of any decent skipper who might be sailing to Southampton or London if, when I had had a few days to think things over, my mind remained the same.
Next day a great king's ship of three decks came into the river, and I passed the whole morning in gazing at her, watching what went on upon her deck, and the boatloads of mariners that came ashore from her, envying the officers, and wavering in my design to join a merchant vessel. The vessel was named, as I found, the Sans Pareil, and though I had little French (the dead tongues being most thought of at Shrewsbury), I knew the words meant "the matchless," and certainly she outdid all the other ships around her.
The only vessel, indeed, that any way approached her was a large brig which, as my friend Woodrow had told me the day before, was a privateer that was being fitted out by certain gentlemen and merchants of Bristowe for work against the French. The Bristowe merchants had suffered great losses from the depredations made on their ships by French corsairs. Many a vessel loaded with a rich freight of sugar, or tobacco, or other produce of the colonies, had fallen a prey to the enemy, who swooped out of St. Malo or Brest, as Woodrow said, and snapped up our barques almost within sight of their harbor. 'Twas not to be wondered at that those who had suffered in this way should make reprisals.
The Sans Pareil had such a fascination for me (never having seen a king's ship before) that I was only awakened to the passage of time by the crying out of my stomach. I had promised Mistress Perry, the widow with whom I had taken up my abode, that I would return punctually at noon for my dinner, and now the church clocks (no less than my hunger) told me it was long past that hour. She would be mightily vexed, and the joint would be burned black, and I neither wished to offend her nor to eat cinders. So I now hurried away as fast as my legs would carry me, and soon came to the footpath leading to Clifton.
As I turned the corner by Jacob's Well, I stepped hastily aside to avoid a man who was coming fast in the opposite direction. He also moved at the same moment, and, as I have often known to happen at such sudden encounters, the very movements made to prevent the collision brought it about. We both moved to the same side, and jostled each other, and I, being the more weighty of the two, gave him a tough shoulder and well nigh upset him.
"Clumsy h--" he was beginning, but he got no further, and 'twas well he did not, for if he had uttered the word "hound" that had all but come to his lips he would scarce have gone on his way without my mark upon him. But he did not say it, being indeed startled out of his self possession. No doubt he had as little expected to see me as I to see him: it was Cyrus Vetch.