Читать книгу The Mutineers - Charles Boardman Hawes - Страница 13

My father's study, as I entered it on an April morning in 1809, to learn his decision regarding a matter that was to determine the course of all my life, was dim and spacious and far removed from the bustle and clamor of the harbor-side. It was a large room paneled with dark wood. There were books along the walls, and paintings of ships, and over the fireplace there stood a beautiful model of a Burmese junk, carved by some brown artist on the bank of the Irawadi.

My father sat by the open window and looked out into the warm sunshine, which was swiftly driving the last snow from the hollows under the shrubbery.

Already crocuses were blossoming in the grass of the year before, which was still green in patches, and the bright sun and the blue sky made the study seem to me, entering, dark and sombre. It was characteristic of my father, I thought with a flash of fancy, to sit there and look out into a warm, gay world where springtime was quickening the blood and sunshine lay warm on the flowers; he always had lived in old Salem, and as he wrote his sermons, he always had looked out through study windows on a world of commerce bright with adventure. For my own part, I was of no mind to play the spectator in so stirring a drama.

With a smile he turned at my step. "So, my son, you wish to ship before the mast," he said, in a repressed voice and manner that seemed in keeping with the dim, quiet room. "Pray what do you know of the sea?"

I thought the question idle, for all my life I had lived where I could look from my window out on the harbor.

"Why, sir," I replied, "I know enough to realize that I want to follow the sea."

"To follow the sea?"

There was something in my father's eyes that I could not understand. He seemed to be dreaming, as if of voyages that he himself had made. Yet I knew he never had sailed blue water. "Well, why not?" he asked suddenly. "There was a time—"

I was too young to realize then what has come to me since: that my father's manner revealed a side of his nature that I never had known; that in his own heart was a love of adventure that he never had let me see. My sixteen years had given me a big, strong body, but no great insight, and I thought only of my own urgent desire of the moment.

"Many a boy of ten or twelve has gone to sea," I said, "and the Island

Princess will sail in a fortnight. If you were to speak to Captain

Whidden—"

My father sternly turned on me. "No son of mine shall climb through the cabin windows."

"But Captain Whidden—"

"I thought you desired to follow the sea—to ship before the mast."

"I do."

"Then say no more of Captain Whidden. If you wish to go to sea, well and good. I'll not stand in your way. But we'll seek no favoritism, you and I. You'll ship as boy, but you'll take your medicine like a man."

"Yes, sir," I said, trying perversely to conceal my joy.

"And as for Captain Whidden," my father added, "you'll find he cuts a very different figure aboard ship from that he shows in our drawing-room."

Then a smile twinkled through his severity, and he laid his hand firmly on my shoulder.

"Son, you have my permission ungrudgingly given. There was a time—well, your grandfather didn't see things as I did."

"But some day," I cried, "I'll have a counting-house of my own—some day—"

My father laughed kindly, and I, taken aback, blushed at my own eagerness.

"Anyway," I persisted, "Roger Hamlin is to go as supercargo."

"Roger—as supercargo?" exclaimed a low voice.

I turned and saw that my sister stood in the door.

"Where—when is he going?"

"To Canton on the Island Princess! And so am I," I cried.

"Oh!" she said. And she stood there, silent and a little pale.

"You'll not see much of Roger," my father remarked to me, still smiling. He had a way of enjoying a quiet joke at my expense, to him the more pleasing because I never was quite sure just wherein the humor lay.

"But I'm going," I cried. "I'm going—I'm going—I'm going!"

"At the end of the voyage," said my father, "we'll find out whether you still wish to follow the sea. After all, I'll go with you this evening, when supper is done, to see Joseph Whidden."

The lamps were lighted when we left the house, and long beams from the windows fell on the walk and on the road. We went down the street side by side, my father absently swinging his cane, I wondering if it were not beneath the dignity of a young man about to go to sea that his parent should accompany him on such an errand.

Just as we reached the corner, a man who had come up the street a little distance behind us turned in at our own front gate, and my father, seeing me look back when the gate slammed, smiled and said, "I'll venture a guess, Bennie-my-lad, that some one named Roger is calling at our house this evening."

Afterwards—long, long afterwards—I remembered the incident.

When my father let the knocker fall against Captain Whidden's great front door, my heart, it seemed to me, echoed the sound and then danced away at a lively pace. A servant, whom I watched coming from somewhere behind the stairs, admitted us to the quiet hall; then another door opened silently, a brighter light shone out upon us, and a big, grave man appeared. He welcomed us with a few thoughtful words and, by a motion of his hand, sent us before him into the room where he had been sitting.

"And so," said Captain Whidden, when we had explained our errand, "I am to have this young man aboard my ship."

"If you will, sir," I cried eagerly, yet anxiously, too, for he did not seem nearly so well pleased as I had expected.

"Yes, Ben, you may come with us to Canton; but as your father says, you must fill your own boots and stand on your own two feet. And will you, friend Lathrop,"—he turned to my father—"hazard a venture on the voyage?"

My father smiled. "I think, Joe," he said, "that I've placed a considerable venture in your hands already."

Captain Whidden nodded. "So you have, so you have. I'll watch it as best I can, too, though of course I'll see little of the boy. Let him go now. I'll talk with you a while if I may."

My father glanced at me, and I got up.

Captain Whidden rose, too. "Come down in the morning," he said. "You can sign with us at the Websters' counting-house.—And good-bye, Ben," he added, extending his hand.

"Good-bye? You don't mean—that I'm not to go with you?"

He smiled. "It'll be a long time, Ben, before you and I meet again on quite such terms as these."

Then I saw what he meant, and shook his hand and walked away without looking back. Nor did I ever learn what he and my father talked about after I left them there together.