“Give it here, my lad,” said the man more civilly to me, calling to a marine close by. “I’ll have the letter passed off to him at once; and you’d best step into the office there and wait till the master-at-arms can see you.”
So saying, he pointed to a large open sort of cabin, with glass sides to it, immediately adjoining the entry-port, where I found a couple of boys of about my own age, and who had evidently come aboard on a similar errand.
One of these was a red-haired, short, thickset fellow, with an ugly, bulldog sort of a face, whose beetle-brows met over a pair of ferrety eyes, giving him a most forbidding appearance, and I did not like the look of him at all.
The other was a poor ragged chap, without any shoes to his feet; but he had a jaunty devil-me-care air, and such a pleasant smile and merry twinkle about the corners of his mouth, that I could not help taking a fancy to him, at once hoping that we might be chums.
However, I did not have much time for reflection anent either of them; for hardly had we taken stock of each other, when a stoutish middle-aged man, dressed in a tight-fitting monkey-jacket, ornamented with the letters ‘NP’ on the collar, and a row of bright crown-and-anchor buttons down the front, besides having a gold badge bearing the same device over the mohair band of his blue peaked cap, appeared at the doorway of the cabin, or ‘police office,’ as the place is properly called, where we three boys were waiting anxiously to learn our fate.
“Ha, humph! A nice lot of raw material to be licked into shape!” observed this gentleman, whose uniform denoted that he was the master-at-arms, or head of the ship’s police. He was evidently cogitating within himself as to our respective and collective capabilities, for he eyed us critically the while as we stood before him, hats off and mute as mice. “Hi, my lads! I fancy I know what you’re after this fine morning. You want to join the service, I can see, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” the three of us shouted in three different keys—“yes, sir—yes, sir!”
“Keep your hair on, lads,” he said, amused at our eagerness. “Got your papers all right, eh?”
To this the ugly chap, as well as the one to whom I had taken a liking, responded by handing over to the master-at-arms certain official documents representing their certificate of birth to show they were of the proper age, and a declaration of their parents that they were joining Her Majesty’s Service with their full consent and goodwill.