"'Twas an ill turn you did me and the ship's company, Mr. Diggle, bringing this useless lubber aboard."
"It does appear so, captain," said Diggle sorrowfully. "But 'tis his first voyage, sir: discipline--a little discipline!"
Meanwhile Desmond, without a word, had moved away to obey orders. He had long since found the uselessness of protest. Diggle had taken him on board the Good Intent an hour before sailing. He left him to himself until the vessel was well out in the mouth of the Thames, and then came with a rueful countenance and explained that, after all his endeavors, the owners had absolutely refused to accept so youthful a fellow as supercargo. Desmond felt his cheeks go pale.
"What am I to be, then?" he asked quietly.
"Well, my dear boy, Captain Barker is rather short of apprentices, and he has no objection to taking you in place of one if you will make yourself useful. He is a first-rate seaman. You will imbibe a vast deal of useful knowledge and gain a free passage, and when we reach the Indies I shall be able, I doubt not, by means of my connections, to assist you in the first steps of what, I trust, will prove a successful career."
"Then, who is supercargo?"
"Unluckily that greatness has been thrust upon me. Unluckily, I say; for the office is not one that befits a former fellow of King's College at Cambridge. Yet there is an element of good luck in it, too; for, as you know, my fortunes were at a desperately low ebb, and the emoluments of this office, while not great, will stand me in good stead when we reach our destination, and enable me to set you, my dear boy--to borrow from the vernacular--on your legs."
"You have deceived me, then!"
"Nay, nay, you do bear me hard, young man. To be disappointed is not the same thing as to be deceived. True, you are not, as I hoped, supercargo, but the conditions are not otherwise altered. You wished to go to India--well, Zephyr's jocund breezes, as Catullus hath it, will waft you thither: we are flying to the bright cities of the East. No fragile bark is this, carving a dubious course through the main, as Seneca, I think, puts it. No, 'tis an excellent vessel, with an excellent captain, who will steer a certain course, who fears not the African blast nor the grisly Hyades nor the fury of Notus--"
Desmond did not await the end of Diggle's peroration. It was then too late to repine. The vessel was already rounding the Foreland, and though he was more than half convinced that he had been decoyed on board on false pretenses, he could not divine any motive on Diggle's part, and hoped that his voyage would be not much less pleasant than he had anticipated.