Chapter Eight.
Bound for Africa.
One morning, towards the termination of breakfast, Jack Rogers was leaning back in his chair, with a bit of buttered toast in one hand and the Times in the other, on the contents of which he was making a running commentary, when he stopped short, put down his toast, took a hurried sip of his tea, and exclaimed, “So my old skipper has got a ship again, and they say is going out as commodore to the coast of Africa.”
“Dear me!” observed Mrs Rogers, “I am afraid that Captain Lascelles will not like that; I should always have such a horror of that dreadful station.”
“Oh, mother, don’t pray entertain such a notion as that,” said Jack, with no little emphasis. “There is in the first place plenty of work to be done there, which in these piping times of peace is a great consideration. Only think of the fun of capturing a slaver, and what is more, of getting an independent command; or at least that is of a prize, you know, and being away from one’s ship for weeks together. And then there is cruising in open boats, and exploring rivers, and fights with pirates or slavers; perhaps a skirmish with the dependents of some nigger potentate, and fifty other sorts of adventures, not to speak of prize-money and all that sort of thing, you know. Oh, to my mind, the coast of Africa is one of the best stations in the world, in spite of what is said against it.”
When Jack made this assertion, he had never been there. He talked on till he had worked himself up to a fit of enthusiasm, and almost made his family believe that the African station was not so bad a one after all. The truth was that when Captain Lascelles paid off the Racer he promised Jack that should he get another ship soon he would apply for him, and Jack therefore felt pretty certain that he should himself be very soon on station, and he of course was anxious to prevent his parents or sisters from feeling any undue anxiety on his account. He could not sit down or turn his mind to anything all day till he discovered a copy of the Cruise of the Midge, over the graphic pages of which he was observed to be intently poring; and then he went and routed out of the library one or two books descriptive of the west coast of Africa. At dinner he could talk of nothing else but the Gold Coast, and the Ivory Coast, and Congo, and other places in those regions.
“Why, Jack, we might suppose that you were contemplating going out there from the way you talk about those places,” observed one of his brothers, who wanted to bring some other subject on the tapis.
“And so of course I am,” exclaimed Jack. “I should like to stay at home among you all; but as I have chosen a profession, and there is not another like it, I hope to stick to it, and I intend always to look out where there is most work to be done, and to go there.”
“My dear child,” said his mother, “but not to the coast of Africa.”