“No, sir; he’s no hard bargain,” answered Edkins. “I heard the captain say his name is Bryan, the same officer who, with twenty hands, cut out a French brig of seven guns and ninety men the other day in the West Indies.”
“All right; he’ll do for us,” observed Mr Johnson, with a patronising air. “By the bye, Edkins, have you received any directions about this boy?”
“No, sir; only that he was to go aboard at once.”
“Very well, then, I’ll take him. Come, youngster—what’s your name?”
“Please, sir, it be Tobias Bluff; but I be called Toby most times,” answered my young follower, evidently awe-struck with the manner and appearance of Mr Johnson. Not an inch did he move, however, from my side.
“Come along, boy,” cried the boatswain in a thundering tone which might have been heard half down the High Street.
“Noa,” said Toby, looking up undauntedly at him; “I has a said I’d stick to the young squire, and I’ll no budge from his side, no, not if you bellows louder than Farmer Dobbs’s big bull.”
Never had the boatswain been thus bearded by a ship’s boy. His black eyes flashed fire—his nose grew redder than ever, and seizing him by the collar of his jacket, he would have carried him off in his talons, as an eagle does a leveret, had not Edkins and I interfered.
“You see, Mr Johnson, the boy has the hay-seed in his hair, and doesn’t know who you are, or anything about naval discipline,” observed the coxswain. “If you’d let him stay with the young gentleman, I’ll just put him up to a thing or two, and bring him aboard by and by.”
Mr Johnson, who was really not an ill-natured man, agreed to this, remarking, “Mind, boy, the king is a great man ashore, but I’m a greater afloat—ho, ho, ho,” and away he walked down the street to the Point.