It was a hard matter for Bill to wish all his brothers and sisters good-bye, and harder still to part from his mother, but he did it in a brave, hearty way. Old Joe Simmons, who had known him all his life, and known his mother too, for that matter, since she was born, insisted on taking him off.
“The Lilly will be going out of harbour to-day, or to-morrow at farthest, and the sooner you are aboard, my boy, the better,” said old Joe, taking Bill’s bundle from Mrs Sunnyside. “Come along with me. And now, Mrs Sunnyside, do you go back, there’s a good woman, now. I’ll look after your boy, and see him all right aboard. I know three or four of her crew who shipped from here, and I will speak to one or two of them, and they will put Bill up to what he ought to do, so that he won’t seem like a green-horn when they get to sea. There’s the captain of the maintop, Jack Windy, son of an old shipmate of mine, and he will stand Bill’s friend, if I ask him. And there’s little Tommy Rebow, who has been to sea for a year or more; and I’ll just tell him I will break every bone in his body if he don’t behave right to Bill. So, you see, he will have no lack of friends, Mrs Sunnyside. There now, good-bye, good-bye! Bless you, missus! Bless you! Don’t fret, now; Bill will be all right.”
These words the old man uttered, as he pushed his wherry from the beach, and pulled up the harbour towards a fine corvette which lay at anchor off Gosport.
Chapter Three.
The Lilly was a fine, rakish-looking corvette, with a crew of one hundred and twenty, officers and seamen, as Joe Simmons informed Bill.
The old man went up the side with him.
“There’s the first lieutenant,” he said. “You just go up and tell him you have come aboard. It will be all right. Although he looks very grand, he is all right at bottom; and I have heard more than one thing in his favour. He won’t eat you; so don’t be afear’d, Bill.”
Bill did as he was advised, and presented the captain’s card. Mr Barker glanced at it.