“Oh, Jack!” he exclaimed, “where are you going? I wanted to come yesterday, but could not, because my mother took me to see the Port-Admiral, and all sorts of other naval authorities. I wanted, as I told you, to go to sea, and she seems to think it’s a very good place for me to go to. She says that as I have been so nearly drowned once, I am not likely to be drowned again; that it’s much less expensive than being in the dragoons, and, in fact, she made up her mind that to sea I was to go. Somehow or other she and the naval big-wigs have settled it, and I am to go on board the old Roarer, which is to sail, in a short time, for the East Indies.”
“That’s the very ship I have joined,” I answered.
“Is it? How jolly! but are you to be a midshipman?”
“No,” I answered, “I am only rated as a boy on board.”
“Oh! I suppose there is no great difference. I do not know much about a ship, or the ways of a ship. I am to have a fine new uniform, and a dirk, and a chest full of no end of things. Well, we shall know more about it by-and-by; but I was forgetting what I came for. I wanted you to come up to the house. My father wants to talk to you, and my sisters want to see you; to make much of you, I fancy, but that might be a bore. But, I say, let those two soldiers take your chest aboard, and present your compliments to the captain, and say you will come by-and-by.”
My father and his companion, on hearing this, burst out laughing.
“I have a notion, young master,” said my father, “that that would not do for Jack. Much obliged to you all the same; but you are likely to be in one station, and he in another, so I am afraid the kindness you intend him will not do him any good. I promised to take him on board the Roarer this morning, and I shall have to go on duty again very soon; so once more I have to thank you, and wish you good morning!”
Master Plumb seemed rather astonished at this answer.
“Rather a proud chap that soldier,” he said to me. “I should have taken him for an officer, if he had not been carrying the box. Who is it?”
“My father,” I answered.