Dick had been the busiest of the busy. He now appeared, with no small pride in his countenance, leading by the hand a little boy dressed in a seaman’s jacket and trowsers, his shirt-collar turned down, and a little tarpaulin hat stuck on the top of his curly head. He went boldly aft, till he reached the captain, who, with several officers, was standing on the quarterdeck.
“Touch your hat, Charley,” said Dick. Charley obeyed promptly with a true sailor’s manner, showing that his guardian had, according to his own ideas, commenced his education, and had at all events taught him to be obedient.
“Please, sir, this here little chap is Charley Laurel, as I brought aboard t’other night,” began Dick. “Some wanted to call him one name, some another. We called him Charley, sir, after Mr Slings, the boatswain, who offered to stand godfather; and ’cause, as I may say, he belongs to all of us, we have given him the name of Laurel, after the old barky, if that’s agreeable to you, sir.”
“I have no objection to any name you may give him,” answered the captain; “but I warn you that we shall have before many weeks to restore him to his friends, when we shall find out his proper one, and I have no doubt they will be glad to reward you for the care you have taken of him.”
“I want no reward, sir, except perhaps a glass of grog to drink their healths, and small thanks we will give them if they take him from us. It will be hard to lose him as well as our other booty, especially when he takes to us so kindly. To my mind, he will be much better off with us than among them niggers, who will just spoil him with sugar-cane and letting him have his own way. Besides, sir, the black woman gave him to me, and unless you says so, we will not hand him over to them.”
Dick slapped his leg as he spoke, as a clencher to his assertion, and in his eagerness was going to use a strong expression, when, recollecting that he was on the quarterdeck, and to whom he was speaking, he stopped short.
“Well, my man,” said the captain, good-naturedly, not offended with Dick’s freedom, “make the most of the little fellow while you have him, and we will see what to do with him by-and-by.”
There is an old saying which should never be forgotten, that “Man proposes, but God disposes.”
It was the hurricane season. Captain Blunt had been doing his best to get the damages the ship had received repaired. He was pacing the deck, and every now and then casting an anxious eye round the horizon, knowing well that the gallant little Laurel was ill able to withstand either a gale or an enemy, by either of which she might be assailed, although, like a true sailor, he was ready to meet the one or the other with undaunted courage.
The ocean was like a sheet of glass, and the hot sun struck down on the deck with tremendous force. Those who could, sat in the shade, those who could not, as Dick observed, “had to grin and bear it, though it was not much odds where a man got to, it was hot everywhere.”