“What! never been outside o’ this cranky little island, where men have hardly got room to blow their noses?” he asked in amazement.
“Never,” I responded again. “And what’s more, up to the day before yesterday I never wished to go.”
My seafaring friend sighed and smoked in silence. The silence grew solemn, and I thought he would not condescend to address me again. At length, however, he said:
“You’re a Londoner, I guess.”
I guessed negatively; but not at all abashed at his mistake, he went on:
“Well, it’s all the same. All Londoners an’t born in London, any more than all Englishmen are born in England. But they’re all the same. A Londoner never cares to study any geography beyond his sixpenny map o’ London. The Marble Arch and Temple Bar, Hyde Park and London Bridge, are his points o’ the compass. Guild Hall and the Houses o’ Parliament mean more to him than the East or West Indies, the Himalaya Mountains, North or South America, or the Pyramids. The Strand is bigger than the equator, and the National Gallery a finer building than S. Peter’s. Your thorough, home-bred Englishman is about the most vigorously ignorant man I’ve ever sailed across; and I’m an Englishman myself who say it. I do believe it’s their very ignorance that has made them masters of the best part of the world, and the worst masters the world has ever seen. They never see or know or believe anything outside of London, and the consequence is, they’re always making mighty blunders. There, there’s a yarn, and a yarn always makes me thirsty. What will you drink?”
I found my new companion a shrewd and observant man under a somewhat rough coating. He was captain of a steamer belonging to one of the great lines that ply between England and the United States, and his vessel sailed for New York the next day. Here was an opportunity of ending at once all my doubts and hesitations. But on broaching the subject to the captain I found him grow at once cautious, not to say suspicious. That fatal admission about my never having been to sea at all told terribly against me. Then he wanted to know if I had a companion of any kind with me, which I took to be sailor’s English for asking if it were a runaway match. Satisfied on this point, he grew more suspicious still. Running away with a young lass he could understand, and perhaps be brought to pardon; but if it was not that, then what earthly object could I have in going to New York all alone?
“The fact is, youngster,” he blurted out at length, “you see it an’t all fair and above-board with you. Youngsters like you don’t make up their minds in half an hour to go to New York; and if they do, they’ve no business to. If you was a little younger, I should call in a policeman, and tell him you had run away from home. I don’t want to help youngsters—nor anybody else, for that matter—to run into scrapes. There will be some one crying for you, you know, and that an’t pleasant now. Now, then, out with it, and let’s have the whole story. There’s something wrong, and a clean breast, like a good sea-sickness, will relieve you. It’s a little unpleasant at first, but you’ll feel all the better for it afterwards. Trust an old sailor’s word for that.”
I do not attempt to give the pleasant nautical terms with which my excellent friend, the captain, garnished his discourse. However, I told him my story, sufficiently at least to diminish, if not quite to allay, the worthy man’s scruples about my projected trip, which, of course, was only to last until the storm at home blew over. Finally, at a very early hour in the morning it was resolved that I should make my first voyage with the captain, and that same day I penned, and in the afternoon despatched, the following note to Kenneth:
“My Dear Kenneth: By the time you receive this I shall be on my way to the United States. I said nothing to you of my plans last night, because, had I done so, I fear they might not have been put in execution without some unnecessary pain and difficulties. My chief reason for leaving England is the great doubt and perplexity that have fallen upon me. Any hope of clearing up such doubt in Leighstone would be absurd. There all persons and all things run in established grooves, and are more or less under the influence of traditions, many of which have for me utterly lost all force and meaning. A little rubbing with the world, a little hard work, of which I know nothing, the sweetness as well as the anxiety of genuine struggle in places and among persons where I shall be simply another fellow-struggler, can do no great harm, even if it does no great good. At all events, it will be a change; and a change of some kind I had long contemplated. A little difficulty with my father about not attending church as usual scarcely hastened my resolution to leave Leighstone. I should feel very grateful to you if you could assure him of this, as I took the liberty on leaving of telling my sister that they would next hear of me in all probability through you. My father’s kind heart and love for me may lead him to lay too great stress upon what in reality nowise affected my conduct and feelings towards him. Time is up, I find, and I can only add that wherever I may go I shall carry with me, warm in my heart, the friendship so strangely begun between us.