He said to me, 'You know, in this ship you will have to work.' I said
I had to work in every ship I had ever been in. 'Ah, but this is
different, and you gentlemen out of them big ships; . . . but there! I
dare say you will do. Join to-morrow.'
"I joined to-morrow. It was twenty-two years ago; and I was just twenty.
How time passes! It was one of the happiest days of my life. Fancy!
Second mate for the first time--a really responsible officer! I wouldn't
have thrown up my new billet for a fortune. The mate looked me over
carefully. He was also an old chap, but of another stamp. He had a Roman
nose, a snow-white, long beard, and his name was Mahon, but he insisted
that it should be pronounced Mann. He was well connected; yet there was
something wrong with his luck, and he had never got on.
"As to the captain, he had been for years in coasters, then in the
Mediterranean, and last in the West Indian trade. He had never been
round the Capes. He could just write a kind of sketchy hand, and didn't
care for writing at all. Both were thorough good seamen of course,
and between those two old chaps I felt like a small boy between two
grandfathers.
"The ship also was old. Her name was the _Judea_. Queer name, isn't it?
She belonged to a man Wilmer, Wilcox--some name like that; but he has
been bankrupt and dead these twenty years or more, and his name don't
matter. She had been laid up in Shadwell basin for ever so long. You may
imagine her state.
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