“Hullo, boatswain!” he shouted out, “making friends with the youngster, eh?”
“Why, bless you, Cap’en Billings,” answered Jorrocks, touching his cap, “he and I are old shipmates.”
“Indeed! I had no idea of his having been at sea before,” said the skipper, apparently very much astonished at this news.
“Oh, aye, sir, he has,” returned my old friend, glad to be able to put in a good word for me, as he thought, after the little lecture he had just given me. “He was on board a coal brig with me two years ago, a coasting craft that plied up along shore to Noocastle and back; and you’ll find him no green hand, Cap’, but a smart able chap, one that’ll get out to the weather earing when there’s a call to reef topsails sooner than many a full-grown seaman, for he knows his way up the rigging.”
“I’m very glad to hear that,” said the skipper, turning to me, with an affable smile that lighted up his twinkling blue eyes. “When Sam Pengelly told me you were a capable lad, of course, I naturally took his opinion to proceed more from personal bias than practical comment on your seamanship; but, now that I learn from Jorrocks here, on more independent testimony, that you’re no novice on board ship and have already mastered the rough rudiments of your profession in the best way possible—that of having been before the mast as a regular hand—why, you’ll be able to get on all the faster, and be able to command the deck by-and-by on your own hook. How are you up in navigation, eh?”
“I can take the sun, sir,” said I, modestly, not wishing to blow my own trumpet.
“Anything else?”
“Yes, sir, I can work out a reckoning, I believe,” I answered.
“Ha, humph, pretty good! I’ll try you by-and-by, Leigh,” said Captain Billings, turning aside for the moment to order the port watch to give one extra pull to the weather braces—“mind and bring out your sextant when you see me on deck at eight bells. I suppose you’ve got one in your chest, eh?”
“Oh yes, sir, Sam Pengelly gave me one,” I replied, and the skipper then went into the cabin while Jorrocks and I resumed our interrupted conversation.