“Here is the young gentleman, Mr Junk,” he said, addressing a one-eyed, burly, broad-shouldered personage, with a rubicund countenance, in a semi-nautical costume. “You know what to do with him, and so I leave him in your hands. Good-bye, Jack, I hope you may like it.”
“No fear of that, Mr Munch,” I answered; “and tell them at home that you left me as jolly and happy as ever.”
“So, Master Brooke, you want to go to sea?” said Mr Junk, squirting a stream of tobacco-juice across his office, and eyeing me with his sole bloodshot blinker; “and you expect to like it?”
“Of course I do; I expect to be happy wherever I am,” I answered in a confident tone.
“We shall see,” he replied. “I have sent your chest aboard of the Naiad. Captain Grimes will be here anon, and I’ll hand you over to him.”
The person he spoke of just then made his appearance. I did not particularly like my future commander’s outside. He was a tall, gaunt man, with a long weather-beaten visage and huge black or rather grizzled whiskers; and his voice, when he spoke, was gruff and harsh in the extreme. I need not further describe him; only I will observe that he looked considerably cleaner then than he usually did, as I afterwards found on board the brig. He took but little notice of me beyond a slight nod, as he was busy with the ship’s papers. Having pocketed them, he grasped me by the hand with a “Come along, my lad; I am to make a seaman on ye.” He spoke in a broad Northumbrian accent, and in a harsh guttural tone. I was not prepossessed in his favour, but I determined to show no signs of unwillingness to accompany him.
We were soon seated in the stern of an excessively dirty boat, with coal-dust-begrimed rowers, who pulled away with somewhat lazy strokes towards a deeply-laden brig lying out in mid-stream. “Get on board, leddie, with you,” said the captain, who had not since my first introduction addressed a single word to me. I clambered up on deck. The boat was hoisted in, the topsails let fall, and the crew, with doleful “Yeo-yo-o’s,” began working round the windlass, and the Naiad in due time was gliding down the Tyne.
She was a very different craft to what I had expected to find myself on board of. I had read about the white decks and snowy canvas, the bright polish and the active, obedient crew of a man-of-war; and such I had pictured the vessel I had hoped to sail in. The Naiad was certainly a contrast to this; but I kept to my resolve not to flinch from whatever turned up. When I was told to pull and haul away at the ropes, I did so with might and main; and, as everything on board was thickly coated with coal-dust, I very soon became as begrimed as the rest of the crew.
I was rather astonished, on asking Captain Grimes when tea would be ready—for I was very hungry—to be told that I might get what I could with the men forward. I went down accordingly into the forecastle, tumbling over a chest, and running my head against the stomach of one of my new shipmates as I groped my way amid the darkness which shrouded it. A cuff which sent me sprawling on the deck was the consequence. “Where are your eyes, leddie?” exclaimed a gruff voice. “Ye’ll see where ye are ganging the next time.”
I picked myself up, bursting into a fit of laughter, as if the affair had been a good joke. “I beg your pardon, old fellow,” I said; “but if you had had a chandelier burning in this place of yours it would not have happened. How do you all manage to see down here?”