“Now don’t you go putting your oar in, my woman,” said the constable. “I don’t like the man, but he was within his rights in turning out of the house the boy he dismissed for misbehaviour——”
“Misbehaviour, indeed!” Susan interrupted. “What’s his own behaviour like? Tell me that. Mr. Greatorex ought to know what a temper the man has got, and if he didn’t live so far away I’d tell him myself. Martin shall write it down for me, being no scholar myself, and we’ll send Mr. Greatorex a letter.”
“Avast there!” said Dick. “Look at it sensible, Sue. Mr. Greatorex is the owner of the ship, so to put it, and he’s made Slocum captain. ’Tain’t for us to question his right so to do. And d’you think he’s going to bother his head about the ship’s boy?”
“What ship’s boy?”
“Why, Martin, of course. In a manner of speaking he was the ship’s boy aboard that craft.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” exclaimed Susan. “You and your ship’s boy—and Martin the son of a captain and owner! Gollop, I wonder at your ignorance.”
“Well, my dear, what you can’t help, make the best of. Let things alone, that’s what I say, and maybe Martin’ll never meet Slocum again, and so it won’t matter.”
Martin was not long in deciding that Mr. Slocum had really done him a good turn. He liked his new job—to deliver bread to the ships in the Pool. Their officers, coming into harbour after long voyages, were glad to get a change from the hard, mouldy, and often worm-bitten biscuit which they had to put up with at sea. Mr. Faryner’s excellent loaves found a ready sale among them.
At least once, sometimes twice, a day Martin rowed out from the steps below London Bridge to the vessels that lay against the wharves or at anchor in the river. Sometimes he would send up his bread in a basket lowered over the side; sometimes, after tying his painter to the anchor chains, he would himself swarm up a rope ladder to the deck. Now and then he had to scramble across the lighters surrounding a vessel that was taking in or discharging cargo.
He found all this thoroughly interesting and enjoyable. It was much easier to carry his basket in a boat than to carry it on his arm. He liked to meet and chat with the jolly sailor-men and to see the insides of the ships whose outsides he knew so well. If he could not go to sea himself, he felt that the next best thing was to have something to do with those who did, even if it were only supplying them with bread.