Mr. Rowe’s face was inscrutable, and I pleaded harder.

“You’re an old navy man, you know, Rowe,” I said, “and if you recommended me to the captain of one of these ships for a cabin-boy, I’ll be bound they’d take me.”

“Mr. Charles,” said the old man earnestly, “you couldn’t go for a cabin-boy, you don’t know—­”

“You think I can’t rough it,” I interrupted impatiently, “but try me, and see.  I know what I’m after,” I added, consequentially; “and I’ll bear what I have to bear, and do what I’m set to do if I can get afloat.  I’ll be a captain some day, and give orders instead of taking them.”

Mr. Rowe drew up to attention and took off his hat.  “And wanting an able-bodied seaman in them circumstances, sir, for any voyage you likes to make,” said he emphatically, “call for Samuel Rowe.”  He then wiped the passing enthusiasm from the crown of his head with his handkerchief, and continued—­with the judicious diplomacy for which he was remarkable—­“But of course, sir, it’s the Royal Navy you’ll begin in, as a midshipman.  It’s seamanship you wants to learn, not swabbing decks or emptying buckets below whilst others is aloft.  Your father’s son would be a good deal out of place, sir, as cabin-boy in a common trading vessel.”

Mr. Rowe’s speech made an impression, and I think he saw that it did.

“Look here, Master Charles,” said he, “you’ve a gentleman’s feelings:  come home now, and bear me out with your widowed mother and your only sister, sir, and with Master Fred’s father, that I’m in duty bound to, and promised to deliver safe and sound as return cargo, wind and weather permitting.”

“Oh, come home! come home!” reiterated Fred.

I stood speechless for a minute or two.  All around and above me rose the splendid masts, trellised with the rigging that I longed to climb.  The refreshing scent of tar mingled with the smells of the various cargoes.  The coming and going of men who came and went to and fro the ends of the earth stirred all my pulses to restlessness.  And above the noises of their coming and going I heard the lapping of the water of the incoming tide against the dock, which spoke with a voice more powerful than that of Mr. Rowe.

And yet I went with him.

It was not because the canvas bag was empty, not because Fred would not stay with me (for I had begun to think that the captain’s grandson was not destined to be the hero of exploits on the ocean), but when Mr. Rowe spoke of my widowed mother and of Henrietta, he touched a sore point on my conscience.  I had had an uneasy feeling from the first that there was something rather mean in my desertion of them.  Pride, and I hope some less selfish impulse, made me feel that I could never be quite happy—­even on the mainmast top—­if I knew that I had behaved ill to them.