“Poor boy, I pity you,” observed the young gentleman, gravely, and turning up his eyes. “I’d advise you seriously to go back to your mamma. You’ve no idea of all the difficult things you’ll have to learn; of which, how to hand, reef, and steer isn’t the hundredth part.”
“In the first place, I have not a mamma to go to,” I replied, in an indignant tone; for I did not like his mentioning her, even. “And perhaps I know more about a ship than you think of.”
“You! what should you know about a ship, I should like to know?” exclaimed the midshipman, contemptuously.
“Why, I know how to gammon a bowsprit,” I replied, looking at him very hard. “I can work a Turk’s-head, make a lizard, or mouse a stay—can’t I, Larry?” I asked, turning to the old sailor. “And as for steering, I’ve steered round Kilkee Bay scores of times, before you knew how to handle an oar, I’ll be bound—haven’t I, Larry?”
The old man, thus appealed to, looked up and spoke. “Faith, you may well say that same, Master Neil; and proud am I to have taught you. And I’ll just tell you, young gentlemen, I’ll lay a gold guinea that Master D’Arcy here would get the rigging over the mastheads of a ship, and fit her for sea, while either of you were looking at them, and thinking how you were to sway up the topmasts. No offence, you know; but as for gammoning—I don’t think any one would beat you there.”
Several of the midshipmen muttered murmurs of applause at what Larry and I had said, and in a very short time we were all excellent friends, and as intimate as if we were shipmates together. They at once respected him, for they could not help recognising him as a true sailor; and they also saw that, young and inexperienced as I appeared, I was not quite as green as they had at first supposed. And we all parted excellent friends.
We had been waiting some time at the “Star and Garter,” and there were no signs of the Serpent, and from the information Larry gained from those who were likely to know, he was led to believe that several days more might elapse before her return; so he proposed that we should look out for lodgings, as more economical, and altogether pleasanter. I willingly agreed to his plan, so out we set in search of them. We saw several which did not suit us. At last we went to Southsea, which we agreed would be more airy and pleasant; and seeing a bill up at a very neat little house, we knocked at the door, and were admitted. There was a nice sitting-room and bed-room, and a small room which Larry said would do for him. The landlady, who was a pleasant-looking, buxom dame, asked only fifteen shillings a week, including doing for us; so we agreed to take it. By some chance we did not inquire her name.
“Good-bye, Missis,” said Larry. “I’ll send the young gentleman’s traps here in half an hour, and leave him mean time as security. I suppose you’ll have no objection to stay, Master D’Arcy?” he added, turning to me.
I had none, of course, and so it was arranged. While Larry was gone, the good lady took me into the sitting-room, and begging me to make myself at home, was very inquisitive to know all about me. I had no reason for not gratifying her, so I told her how my mother and then my father had died and left me an orphan, and how I had come all the way from Kerry to Portsmouth, and how I belonged to a cutter which I had not yet seen, and how I intended one day to become a Nelson or a Collingwood. Of my resolution the kind lady much approved.
“Ah, my good, dear man, if he had lived, would have become a captain also; but he went to sea and died, and I never from that day to this heard any more of him,” said she, wiping the corner of her eye with her apron, more from old habit than because there were any tears to dry up, for she certainly was not crying. “Those things on the mantel-piece there were some he brought me home years and years ago, when he was a gay young sailor; and I’ve kept them ever since, for his sake, though I’ve been hard pushed at times to find bread to put into my mouth, young gentleman.”