“Are you hard up?” was his next query.
“No,” I answered again, this time bursting into a laugh at the puzzled expression on his face; “I’ve got a shilling and a sixpence—there!” and I drew the coins from my pocket, showing them to him.
“Well, I’m jiggered!” murmured the old fellow to himself, taking off the straight-peaked blue cloth cap he wore, and scratching his head reflectively—as if in a quandary, and cogitating how best to get out of it. “Neither hard up or hungry! I call this a stiff reckoning to work out. I’d better try the young shaver on another tack. Got any friends?” he added, in a louder key—addressing himself, now, personally to me, not supposing that I had heard his previous soliloquy, for he had merely uttered his thoughts aloud.
This question touched me on the sore point, and I looked grave at once.
“No,” I replied, “I’ve got none left now, since Tom’s gone.”
“And who’s Tom?” he asked, confidentially, to draw me out.
Thereupon, I told him of my being an orphan, brought up by relatives who didn’t care about me, and all about my being sent to school. I also detailed, with much gusto, the way in which Tom and I had made our exit from Dr Hellyer’s academy, and our subsequent adventures in the coal brig, down to the moment when I saw the last of my chum as he steamed out of the Plymouth railway station in the Exeter train, leaving me desolate behind.
My new friend did not appear so very much amused by the account of our blowing up the Doctor as I thought he would be. Indeed, he looked quite serious about it, as if it were, no joking matter, as really it was not, but a very bad and mischievous piece of business. What seemed to interest him much more, was, what I told him of my longing for a sea-life, and the determination I had formed of being a sailor—which even the harsh treatment of the Saucy Sall’s skipper had in no degree banished from my mind.
“What a pity you weren’t sent in the service,” he said, meditatively, “I fancy you’d ha’ made a good reefer from the cut of your jib. You’re just the very spit of one I served under when I was a man-o’-war’s-man afore I got pensioned off, now ten year ago!”
“My father was an officer in the Navy,” I replied rather proudly. “He lost his life, gallantly, in the service of his country.”