‘There’s no finer ship than the Childe Harold out of the Thames,’ said Captain Butler.
‘And her captain is a very good sort of a man, we are told,’ said my aunt.
‘I have heard him well spoken of. I don’t know him,’ said Captain Butler.
‘When does Will sail?’ I asked.
‘A fortnight to-day,’ answered my uncle.
‘You remember our compact?’ I said eagerly.
My uncle smiled slowly and shook his head.
‘But I say yes!’ I cried, starting up in my impetuous way. ‘Aunt, you know it was settled. Will was my playmate as a child. I love him as a brother, and I claim the right of giving him his outfit.’
‘She is a sailor’s child,’ said my uncle to Captain Butler.
They told me Will was out; he would return before supper. In a short time I discovered that Captain Butler had been two years absent on a trading voyage in the Pacific; that he was without a ship at present, but was looking for the command of a new barque of about six hundred and thirty tons, called the Arab Chief, in which he was thinking of purchasing a share. I admired him so much that I could not help feeling a sort of inquisitiveness, and asked him a number of questions about his voyage and the sea life. Indeed, I went further. I asked him where he lived and if he had any relatives. There was a boldness in me that was bred of many years of independence and of fearless indifference to people’s opinion. I was by nature downright and off-hand, and whenever I had a question to ask I asked it, without ever troubling my head as to the sort of taste I was exhibiting. All this might have been partly owing to my lonely, independent life; to my being unloved and having nobody to love; to my having been as much an orphan when my father died as though I had lost my mother at the same time.