I could see the big, purple weal that ran right up to his neck."
"If he knew, he would never forgive you," said Mr. Niven with a little laugh. "But what did they do with the duck? Chriss would certainly have forgotten it."
"Appleby brought it away, and gave it to some poor body in Chester," said Mrs. Niven.
"That was the one sensible part of the whole affair, but I want to know why you told me."
"Well," said the lady slowly, "you know he wants to go to sea, and I feel sure his relative would be only too glad to get rid of him. Now it wouldn't be very difficult for you to get him a ship almost without a premium."
"A ship?" said Mr. Niven with a little smile.
"Yes," said the lady. "Chriss's ship. Chriss is – well, you know he is just a trifle thoughtless."
"I fancy you mean spoiled," said her husband. "Still, as usual, you are right. It is quite probable that Chriss will want somebody with a little sense behind him. Going to sea in a merchant ship is a very different kind of thing from what he believes it is."
Mrs. Niven sighed. "Of course. Still, about Appleby?"
"Well," said her husband smiling, "I think I could tell you more when I have had a talk with the owners to-morrow."
He nodded as he went away, and it was next afternoon when he sat talking with an elderly gentleman in a city office.
"We would of course be willing to take a lad you recommended," said the latter. "Still, I was not altogether pleased to hear that my partner had promised to put your son into the Aldebaran."
"No?" said Mr. Niven with a twinkle in his eyes. "Now I fancied you would have been glad of the opportunity of obliging me."
The other man looked thoughtful. "To be frank, I would sooner have had the son of somebody we carried less goods for," said he. "With the steamers beating us everywhere we have to run our ships economically, and get the most out of our men, and I accordingly fancy that while it would not have made him as good a seaman, your son would have been a good deal more comfortable as one of the new cadet apprentices on board a steamer."
Mr. Niven smiled dryly. "I have no great wish to make my lad a seaman. The fact is, there's a tolerably prosperous business waiting for him, but in the meanwhile he will go to sea, and it seems to me that the best thing I can do is to let him. He will probably be quite willing to listen to what I have to tell him after a trip or two, and find out things I could never teach him on board your vessel."
"Well," said the shipowner with a little laugh, "it is often an effective cure as well as a rough one."
Mr. Niven left the office with a document in his pocket, and on Christmas morning Appleby found a big, blue envelope upon his breakfast plate.
"I wonder what is inside it," said Mrs. Niven.
Appleby sighed. "It has a business appearance," he said. "It will be to tell me when I'm to go to the office."
"Hadn't you better open it?" said Mrs. Niven with a glance at her husband, and there was silence while Appleby tore open the envelope. Then the colour crept into his face, and his fingers trembled as he took out a document.
"I can't understand it," he said. "This seems to be an apprentice's commission – indentures – for me. The ship is the Aldebaran."
There was a howl of delight from Chriss, and a rattle as he knocked over his coffee, but Appleby sat still, staring at the paper, while belief slowly replaced the wonder in his eyes. Then he rose up, and his voice was not even as he said, "It is real. I am to go in the Aldebaran. I have to thank you, sir, for this?"
Mr. Niven laughed. "No, my lad," he said. "It was my wife's doing, and if you are sorry by and by you will have her to blame."
Appleby turned to the lady, and his eyes were shining. "It's almost too much," he said. "Chriss and I are going together. It is everything I could have hoped for."
Mrs. Niven smiled, though there was a little flush in her face. "Sit down and get your breakfast before Chriss goes wild and destroys all the crockery," she said.
Chriss laughed uproariously. "Crockery!" he said. "If we'd been at Sandycombe we'd have smashed every pane in the Head's conservatory. Tom, it's – oh, it's jim-bang, blazing, glorious!"
That was the happiest Christmas Appleby had ever spent, and he remembered it many a time afterwards when he kept his lonely watch peering into the bitter night from plunging forecastle and spray-swept bridge, or while he clung to the slanted topsail yard clawing at the canvas that banged above him in the whirling snow.
Then, when he knew the reality, he could smile a little at his boyish dream, but that day he only felt his blood tingle and every fibre in him thrill in answer to the calling of the sea. He was English, and the spirit which had from the beginning of his nation's history driven out hero and patriot, as well as cutthroat slaver and privateer, to scorch, and freeze, and suffer, do brave things, and some that were shameful, too, and with it all keep the red flag flaunting high in symbol of sovereignty, was in him also. All that day shield-ringed galley, caravel, towering three-decker, steel-sheathed warship, and ugly cargo tramp sailed through his visions, and they had for a background palms and coral beaches, mountains rolled in snow cloud, and the blink of frozen seas. They and their crews' story were a part of his inheritance, because, although the times have changed and canvas is giving place to steam, English lads have not forgotten, and the sea is still the same.
Appleby, however, had commenced to realize that going to sea is not all luxury when he stood on the Aldebaran's sloppy deck one bleak morning in February. It was drizzling, and the light was dimmed by a smoky haze, while the ship was foul all over with black grime from the coaling staithes and the dust that had blown across her from a big elevator hurling up Indian wheat. It was also very raw, and Niven's face was almost purple with the cold, while the moisture glistened on his new uniform. A few bedraggled women and a cluster of dripping men stood on the dock wall above them. Other men tumbled dejectedly about the forecastle, falling over the great wet hawsers, while one or two who had crawled out of the mate's sight lay rather more than half-asleep in the shadow beneath it.
A grey-haired man with a sour face paced up and down the poop, raising one hand now and then when a dock official shouted, while Appleby sprang aside when another man he spoke to came down the poop-ladder and along the deck in long, angry strides. He wore a woolly cloth cap, knee-boots, and a very old pilot-coat, and he had a big, coarse face, with heavy jawbone and cruel eyes. Still, the very way he put his feet down denoted strength, and Appleby noticed the depth of his chest and the spread of his shoulders. Niven, who had not seen him, did not move in time, and the man flung him backwards.
"Out of the way!" he said.
Niven's face was flushed when he recovered his balance, and there was an angry flash in his eyes as he watched the man plunge into the shadow below the forecastle. In another moment several figures came scrambling out of it, and went up the ladder as for their lives, with the man in the pilot-coat close behind.
"If that's the new mate he looks more like a prize-fighter than a sailor," said Niven. "How does he strike you, Tom?"
"I think he's a brute," said Appleby quietly.
They said nothing further, for that was their first acquaintance with the under-side of life at sea, and their thoughts were busy, while in another minute the mate looking in their direction signed to them, and it did not appear advisable to keep a man of his kind waiting.
"Give
