“Now, Bowling, my old friend,” said this new ally of mine, who, it struck me, would turn out to be a very important factor in this decision anent my future destiny, “the matter rests entirely with you. ‘Toby or not Toby,’ as Hamlet says in the play. Is your son, young Tom here, to go to sea or not?”
Father took off his hat with his right hand and scratched his head deliberately and deliberatively with his left, ‘humming’ and ‘hawing’ over this crucial question.
“Well, sir—Cap’en Mordaunt that is, begging your pardon, sir, ag’in,” said he—“as you goes on to make sich a favour on it, sir, we’ll see about it, sir.”
“See about it?—Stuff and nonsense, Bowling, my man, that won’t do for me!” exclaimed the other, as, resting his hand lightly on my shoulder as he crossed the thwarts, he stepped out of the wherry on to the landing-stage. “I tell you what it is, young Tom must go to sea, my man—aye, and to-morrow too!”
“Lor’ sakes, you’re just the same, sir, as you were aboard the old Blazer twenty years ago!” said father, breaking into a regular horse-laugh, which he never did except something particularly funny tickled his fancy. “You allers gave your orders sharp as a youngster, and some of us used for to call you ‘Commander Jack’ sometimes. Lor’, I remembers it all as if it wer’ but yesterday!”
“All right, Bowling, I’m glad your memory is so good,” replied Captain Mordaunt, standing on the pontoon and looking down at us, with a smile on his cheery, handsome face. “You will remember, too, that my word was always as good as any bond, and when I say a thing I mean a thing! I’m stopping for a day or two at the Keppel’s Head, and if you’ll come over there this evening after dinner, or send young Tom, should you like that better than a glass of grog, why, I will give you a letter for him to take on board the Saint Vincent to the commander, who’s an old friend of mine like yourself, and we’ll have young Tom entered on the books of the training-ship in a brace of shakes!”
“Thank you kindly, sir,” said father, raising his hand to his cap again in salute as the captain turned to leave us. “You’re very good, sir, for to h’interest yourself, sir, in this yere young scamp of a son o’ mine, sir!”
“Not a bit of it, Bowling, not a bit of it,” rejoined the other cheerily, as he chucked father a sovereign for his fare ashore, and told him to be sure to come up to the Keppel’s Head on the Hard and see him in the evening for the letter of introduction for me. “It’s a shame that such a likely young fellow should not be allowed to follow in his father’s footsteps and turn out as brave and handy a sailor as himself. He’s a born seaman, every inch of him, Bowling, and a regular chip of the old block!”