"I really don't know whom to send with this cargo," said the agent. "It must go in a day or two, and none of my clerks can be spared. Do you know of anybody, Gray?"
"Well, there's a young fellow who came out with me, that might do. He's rather young, certainly, but I put him in charge at Singapore, and he did very well. Hello! there he is. Austin!"
Frank entered, cap in hand.
"My lad," said the Captain, "we're sending a cargo of tin and opium to Canton, and you might take it up, unless you'd rather go home."
"I was thinking of going, sir," said Austin; "but if you have anything for me to do till I can get letters from home, I shall be very glad to do it."
"All right, my boy. Just look in here to-morrow morning, and we'll arrange it."
The next morning, sure enough, Frank received his appointment, and set sail up the river for Canton a few days later, with a handful of the Arizona's picked men for his crew, and old Herrick as his second in command—the latter remarking, with a grin, that "'twarn't a bad start for a youngster to begin his first v'y'ge as coal-heaver, and end it as Cap'n."
Our hero's farther adventures in China—how he succeeded so well with his first cargo as to be at once intrusted with a second—how he received letters from home, reporting all well—how he studied the ins and outs of the "up-country" trade, and the ways of the Chinese, finding both very different from what he had imagined—and how he soon got a good appointment in the office, which he held for several years—would make too long a story to be told here. But he always bore in mind the last words of old Herrick, which were:
"Frank, my son, next time you meet a young feller wantin' to run away to sea, jist you tell him you've tried it yourself, and 'tain't so nice as it looks. If a lad goes to sea 'cause he's fit for it, and ain't 'fraid o' hard work, well and good; but if he goes 'cause he's quarrelled with his bread and butter, all along o' stuffin' his head with dime novels and sich like rubbish, I guess he'll end where you began—in the coal-hole. Now don't you forget them words o' mine." And Frank never did.