"You'll have to overcome that. One day your work will lie in controlling crowds of people."
"Dad, let me stay on a yacht till I get quite well again!"
Larssen considered for a moment. "Well, if it will help you to get your fighting muscle, I'll arrange it. There's a small cruising yacht of mine—the 'Starlight'—lying in Southampton Water. I might have her cruise about the Channel for you."
"Thank you, Dad, I'd like that immensely."
"Yes, I'll see to that. We must go up to London for a few days, and meanwhile I'll arrange to have the 'Starlight' put in order for you."
"Can I be captain of the yacht?"
"That's the spirit I want! But you can't be captain at a jump. You must work your way up. First you'll have to work for your mate's ticket. I'll tell the captain to put you through your paces—give you your trick at the wheel and so on. But see here, Sonny, it'll be work and not play. You'll have to obey orders just as if you were a new apprentice."
"I love the sea! I'll work right enough."
Larssen grew grave with memories. "Work? You'll never know work as I knew it. At fourteen I was a drudge on a Banks trawler. Kicked and punched and fed on the leavings of the fo'castle. Hands skinned raw with hauling on the dredge-ropes——"
A deck steward bearing a wireless telegram came to interrupt them. The message was from Olive, and it read: