“They ain’t exactly green either, boy, but they know that if they made much fuss and bother about insuring they would soon lose their customers, so they often run the risk of a knowin’ fellow like me, and take the loss rather than scare people away. You know, if a grocer was in the habit of carefully weighing and testing with acid every sovereign he got before he would sell a trifle over the counter,—if he called every note in question, and sent up to the bank to see whether it wasn’t a forgery, why, his honest customers wouldn’t be able to stand it. They’d give him up. So he just gives the sovereign a ring and the note a glance an’ takes his chance. So it is in some respects with insurance companies. They look at the man and the papers, see that all’s right, as well as they can, and hope for the best. That’s how it is.”
“Ha! they must be jolly companies to have to do with. I’d like to transact some business with them submarines,” said the boy, gravely.
“And so you shall, my lad, so you shall,” cried Mr Jones with a laugh; “all in good time. Well, as I was saying, the cargo ain’t worth much; it don’t extend down to the keel, Billy, by no means; and as for the sloop—she’s not worth a rope’s-end. She’s as rotten as an old coffin. It’s all I’ve been able to do to make her old timbers hold together for this voyage.”
Billy Towler opened his eyes very wide at this, and felt slightly uncomfortable.
“If she goes down in mid-channel,” said he, “it strikes me that the submarines will get the best of it, ’cause it don’t seem to me that you’re able to swim eight or ten miles at a stretch.”
“We have a boat, Billy, we have a boat, my smart boy.”
Mr Jones accompanied this remark with a wink and a slight poke with his thumb in the smart boy’s side, which, however, did not seem to have the effect of reassuring Billy, for he continued to raise various objections, such as the improbability of the sloop giving them time to get into a boat when she took it into her head to go down, and the likelihood of their reaching the land in the event of such a disaster occurring during a gale or even a stiff breeze. To all of which Mr Jones replied that he might make his mind easy, because he (Jones) knew well what he was about, and would manage the thing cleverly.
“Now, Billy, here’s the lesson that you’ve got to learn. Besides remembering everything that I have told you, and only answering questions in the way that I have partly explained, and will explain more fully at another time, you will take particular note that we left the Thames to-day all right with a full cargo—Jim Welton bein’ master, and one passenger bein’ aboard, whom we agreed to put ashore at Ramsgate. That you heard me say the vessel and cargo were insured for 300 pounds, but were worth more, and that I said I hoped to make a quick voyage over and back. Besides all this, Billy, boy, you’ll keep a sharp look-out, and won’t be surprised if I should teach you to steer, and get the others on board to go below. If you should observe me do anything while you are steering, or should hear any noises, you’ll be so busy with the tiller and the compass that you’ll forget all about that, and never be able to answer any questions about such things at all. Have I made all that quite plain to you?”
“Yes, captain; hall right.”
Billy had taken to styling his new employer captain, and Mr Jones did not object.