I think he called me purposely to test the mettle in me, but I was equal to the feat.
“Aye! aye! sir,” I answered, and, springing to the nearest ladder, I ran up the mast without hesitation or fear. In another minute I was astride the yard, and deftly releasing the canvas, I tautened it to its place, returning to the deck amid the cheers of my station mates.
We were now outside of the great reef over which I had come in the brig two nights before, and our pilot was preparing to leave us. I had some time before noticed that he was the same man who had boarded the Young Phoenix the night of the storm, but had thought little of the fact. Pilots come and go continually, and it was no more strange that he should be hired to take the frigate out than that he had been secured to take the brig into the harbor. But the cheers of the sailors attracted his attention, and he glanced towards me as I swung off the ratlines to the deck. He stared at me for a moment as though he could scarcely believe his eyes, and then he turned to the officer of the deck, and said something to him in his native tongue. The lieutenant replied in the same language, and then with their eyes upon me they engaged in an earnest conversation for a few minutes. Little knowing how much it was to effect my future, I went back to my station.
Once out of the harbor, the bow of the frigate was turned towards the south, and, somewhat anxious to know whither we were bound, I turned to one of my mates, an old tar who had started the cheering which had greeted me on my return from the maintopmast, asking:
“Say, mate, can you tell me what cruise we are on?”
He shook his head. “They don’t let the likes of us know,” he explained. “We may be goin’ to the South Pole for all Pete Berry knows. Say, youngster, who be ye? Ye’ve seen a ship afore, and know a bowline from a rudder, that’s sartain.”
Thanking the old sailor for his compliment, without explaining how I came to be on the frigate, I told who I was, and the main facts of my sea-faring life.
“So yer name is Dunn,” he commented when I was through, “an’ ye’re no greenhorn. I’m glad o’ that. We’ve got more’n sixty aboard now, an’ don’t need another.”
The disgust of the old salt as he announced this fact amused me and we were soon chatting away like old chums. We talked of the ship, of her rigging, and of her sailing qualities. Inadvertently during our conversation I alluded to a few changes that I would make in the adjusting of her canvas to bring out her best speed, and with a quick discernment Pete asked:
“Have ye ever ben in the cabin, sir?”