“If her crew is n’t aboard pretty soon,” I objected, “she can’t sail to-day.”
“Well, no,” my father said, “probably won’t. Could of course, if he wanted to, but ’t is n’t likely. Might go below and anchor, but what are you up to, Timmie? Going on the Clearchus?” And my father smiled as he asked the question, as though it were absurd.
“I ’d like to, father,” I said. “I want to go on a ship that ’s going sperm whaling in the warm oceans; to the South Seas. I—I ’ve always wanted to see the South Seas.”
My father smiled again. “ ‘Always’ is a long word, Timmie. How long does it stand for? And as for seeing an ocean—why, one ocean ’s much like another—except the Ar’tic. You might think you were out on the bay with Jimmie. And a couple of hours’ notice is n’t much for your mother and me, is it, now?—going off for three or four years?”
“No-o, I suppose not. But I did n’t know what I wanted until I saw the Clearchus out there. I know now. And I ’ll come back, father. Of course I hate to leave you and mother—”
My father laughed at that.
“Yes,” he said, “you seem to. But never mind, Timmie, I know how you feel. Perhaps it ’s just as well. We shan’t have the month of dreading it, and it ’ll be over before we know it. I ’ll do the best I can for you, but I can’t promise. Nelson may be having trouble of some kind. I ’ll just drop in at the Custom House on the chance of finding him there, and if he is n’t we ’ll run over to Wing’s to see what they can tell us. But you must n’t fret if it can’t be done.”
I almost danced with joy, and I promised not to fret. I knew that I should not fret at a thing that could not be done. I have never done that. I do the most and the best that I can, and am quite cheerful over the outcome. I was always the same; and what better can a man do than his best, and accept the result with a cheerful heart? But if we had made no attempt to find the captain I should have fretted at having left something undone and possibly lost a chance that I might have had.
We had been walking slowly up William Street as we talked, and it was abreast of Eggers’s little gunshop—where I had been used to go for my supply of fishlines and hooks—that my father virtually gave his consent and told me not to fret. The steep, short slope of Johnnycake Hill was just at our left—the Bourne Whaling Museum is now at the top of it—and the Custom House was but a few steps away, on the upper corner of the next street. I broke away and ran, looking back at my father with an ecstatic smile.
My father laughed again. “Hold on, Timmie,” he called. “Where ’you going?”