“Aye, gone through it, as you say, sir,” returned Clinch, with a husky voice.  “It does well enough for them that go through it, but it’s death to them that stick.  It’s a feather in a midshipman’s cap to be rated a mate; but it’s no honor to be a mate at my time of life, Captain Cuffe.”

“What’s your age, Clinch?  You are not much my senior?”

“Your senior, sir!  The difference in our years is not as great as in our rank, certainly, though I never shall see thirty-two again.  But it’s not so much that, after all, as the thoughts of my poor mother, who set her heart on seeing me with His Majesty’s commission in my pocket; and of another who set her heart on one that I’m afraid was never worthy her affection.”

“This is new to me, Clinch,” returned the captain, with interest.  “One so seldom thinks of a master’s-mate marrying, that the idea of your being in that way has never crossed my mind, except in the manner of a joke.”

“Master’s-mates have married, Captain Cuffe, and they have ended in being very miserable.  But Jane, as well as myself, has made up her mind to live single, unless we can see brighter prospects before us than what my present hopes afford.”

“Is it quite right, Jack, to keep a poor young woman towing along in this uncertainty, during the period of life when her chances for making a good connection are the best?”

Clinch stared at his commander until his eyes filled with tears.  The glass had not touched his lips since the conversation took its present direction; and the usual hard settled character of his face was becoming expressive once more with human emotions.

“It’s not my fault, Captain Cuffe,” he answered, in a low voice; “it’s now quite six years since I insisted on her giving me up; but she wouldn’t hear of the thing.  A very respectable attorney wished to have her, and I even prayed her to accept his offer; and the only unkind glance I ever got from her eye, was when she heard me make a request that she told me sounded impiously almost to her ears.  She would be a sailor’s wife or die a maid.”

“The girl has unfortunately got some romantic notions concerning the profession, Clinch, and they are ever the hardest to be convinced of what is for their own good.”

“Jane Weston!  Not she, sir.  There is not as much romance about her as in the fly-leaves of a prayer-book.  She is all heart, poor Jane; and how I came to get such a hold of it, Captain Cuffe, is a great mystery to myself.  I certainly do not deserve half her affection, and I now begin to despair of ever being able to repay her for it.”