“Our new apprentice,” explained Mr Mackay from the top of the poop ladder as he caught sight of me. “He came aboard just before we left the docks.”
“Ah, I thought I didn’t see him this morning,” observed the captain. And turning to me he said: “I’ve read a very good letter the owners got about you, youngster, and if you only do your duty and obey orders I’ll try to make a sailor out of you, and we’ll get on very well together; but, mind you, if you try any tricks with me, you’ll find me a scorcher.”
“Oh, I think he’ll turn out all right,” put in Mr Mackay as I blushed and stood before the old fellow not knowing what to say, he looked so stern at me when he spoke. “I’ve had a chat with him already, and I think he’s got the right stuff in him.”
“Has he?” returned the captain. “That’s got to be proved by and by. All boys promise well at first, but generally end badly! However, I only want him to understand me at the start, and know that when I say a thing I mean a thing, and stick to it, too. Where are the other ’prentices?”
“I told them they might turn in, as there was nothing else for them to do,” replied the first mate, excusing them; “they were hard at it all day getting the cargo in, and helping to warp out of dock.”
“H’m,” muttered the captain, as if he did not like the idea of anyone having a rest off while he was about; and he compressed his lips while his long nose seemed to grow longer. “H’m!”
“What do you think of doing sir?” inquired Mr Mackay in the middle of this awkward pause, by way of changing the conversation. “The wind looks as if it was going to hold from the east’ard.”
“Aye, so I think, too,” assented Captain Gillespie, looking more amiable as his mind was recalled to action. “It’s just the wind we want for going down Channel; and the sooner we take advantage of it, the better. What say you pilot?”
“I’m agreeable,” replied the thin man alongside him in the monkey-jacket, who was giving some parting message to the one in the oilskin as he went down the side-ladder to take a passage back to Gravesend in the shoreboat that had brought his comrade off. “I think we’d better lose no time but tow on at once to the Downs.”
“Just what I wish,” said Captain Gillespie springing up the poop ladder and taking his place by the side of Mr Mackay; and, as the shoreboat pushed off with its now solitary passenger and only one waterman to pull, he shouted out, “Hands, up anchor!”