“You wish to send your son to sea, sir,” he continued to my father. “As Mr Cruden says, I’ll look after him as if he was my own boy, sir. I’ll keep him from mischief, sir. Lads always gets into mischief if they can; but with me, sir, they can’t—I don’t let ’em. I look after them, sir; and when they knows my eye is on them, they behaves themselves. That’s my principle, sir; and now you know me.”
He said this in an off-hand, bluff, hearty way, which made my father fully believe that he had fallen in with a prize—indeed, that he was supremely fortunate in having secured so kind a protector for me. It was finally arranged that he was to pay Captain Elihu Swales the sum of fifteen pounds; in consideration of which, in addition to any service I could be of, I was to mess at his table, and to learn what I could of a seaman’s duty, till the ship returned to Liverpool.
The Black Swan, the name of Captain Elihu Swales’ ship, would not be ready for sea for some days, he informed my father; and till she was so, as he was compelled to return home immediately, Mr Cruden kindly undertook to board and lodge me at the rate of twelve shillings a week. I was to go on board the Black Swan every day, to see if I was wanted; and I was to return to Mr Cruden’s in the afternoon, or when I was not wanted. My father considered this a very admirable arrangement, and was perfectly confident that he had done the best circumstances would allow, and that he had left me in safe and honourable hands.
On our way to our inn, we met one of the brokers to whom we had spoken in the morning. He asked if we had found what we wanted. “Oh yes,” replied my father, “an excellent man, Captain Swales, a friend of Mr Cruden’s—very superior—very superior indeed.” The broker, I thought, looked odd at this, and was at first apparently going to speak; but on second thoughts he seemed to consider that it was no business of his, and he passed on with a cold “Oh, really—good-day, sir.” It was afterwards only, perhaps, that his manner struck me; at the time I supposed that it was usual to him.
We spent most of the afternoon in purchasing a sea-chest and an outfit for me, according to a list furnished by Mr Cruden, to whose office my traps were transferred forthwith. We did not go down to see the Black Swan, because Captain Swales said she was a long way off, and was not fit to receive visitors, but that she would be in a few days. He then remarked that she was one of the finest and fastest craft out of Liverpool. “Nothing could beat the Black Swan when she had a mind to put her best foot foremost.” I was wondering whether ships really had feet. I afterwards found that this was a figurative way of expressing that she sailed fast. These observations were made when we returned with my chest to Mr Cruden’s, where we again met my future captain; and when the sum agreed on for my voyage was paid into the hands of the first-named person, my father’s heart was softened towards me; and after he had exhausted all the good advice he could think of, and had given me several useful books, and many little articles of his own property, he made me a present of six pounds as pocket-money, and to purchase anything I might wish to bring back from America. He took his watch out of his fob, and would have given me that also, but I persuaded him to keep it, assuring him that I did not require it, and that I should certainly break it, or lose it overboard, as would have been the case probably the first time I went aloft. The next morning my poor father returned by the steamer to Dublin. He felt very much, I am sure, at parting from me, more than he would have done under other circumstances, though by a considerable effort he mastered himself so as not publicly to betray his emotions. He was gone; and I was left alone in the big world to look after myself, with little more experience of its ways than a child.
Chapter Four.
When my father was gone, I went back to Mr Cruden’s office and asked him to tell me where I could find his house, at which I understood I was to lodge.
He looked up from the book in which he was writing, with an air of surprise, and replied, “You are mistaken, my lad, if you suppose that I am about to introduce into the bosom of my family one of whom I know nothing. Your father is a very respectable man, I dare say, and you may be a very estimable youth, for what I know; but it is generally a different sort who are sent to sea as you are being sent; and therefore it is just possible you may be a wild young scamp, whose face his friends may never wish to behold again—hark you.”