“Yes I do.”
“Oh, Reginald!”
“It doesn’t make much difference,” cried Reginald in slighting tones. “The second mates in some of those ships are not much better off than the seamen. You must work, and the food’s pretty much the same, except at the skipper’s table. Let a fellow rise to be first mate, and he is in tolerably smooth water; but until then he must rough it. After this voyage I’ll go up again.”
“But you might have shipped as third mate.”
“I might—if I had taken my time to find a berth. But who was to keep me the while? It takes fifteen shillings a week at the Sailors’ Home, besides odds and ends for yourself that you can’t do without—smoke and things. I couldn’t bear to ask them for more at home. Only think how long I’ve been on shore this time, Maria. I was knocking about London for weeks over my navigation, preparing to pass.—And for the mummies to turn me at last!”
Maria sighed. Poor Reginald’s gloomy prospects were bringing her pain.
“There’s another thing, Maria,” he resumed. “If I had passed for second mate, I don’t see how I could go out as such. Where was my outfit to come from? An officer—if he is on anything of a ship—must look spruce, and have proper toggery. I am quite certain that to go out as second mate on a good ship would have cost me twenty pounds, for additional things that I couldn’t do without. You can’t get a sextant under three pounds, second-hand, if it’s worth having. You know I never could have come upon them for twenty pounds at home, under their altered circumstances.”
Maria made no reply. Every word was going to her heart.
“Whereas, in shipping as a common seaman, I don’t want to take much more than you might tie up in a handkerchief. A fo’castle fellow can shift any way aboard. And there’s one advantage,” ingenuously added Reginald; “if I take no traps out with me, I can’t lose them.”
“But the discomfort?” breathed Maria.