Old Jack | Page 4

seamen bore the corpse to our cottage.
The promise of a supply of whisky easily induced some of the
neighbours to come and howl during the livelong night. This they did
with right good will, although my father was a Protestant and a
foreigner; and I cried and howled in sympathy. I would fain, however,
have forgotten my grief in sleep. The seamen had taken their departure,
promising to return to look after me.
As there was no chance of a man with a fractured skull coming to life
again, the funeral speedily took place. The small quantity of furniture
remaining in the cottage was sold; but the proceeds were barely
sufficient to pay the expenses.
Thus I was left, with the exception of a suit of somewhat ragged clothes

on my back, as naked and poor as when I came into the world about
twelve years before, with a much more expensive appetite than I then
had to supply. Some boys at that age are well able to take care of
themselves, but, as I have said, I was small for my years, and I had
been kept by my poor mother so much by myself, that I knew nothing
of the world and its ways.
Alter the funeral a compassionate neighbour, with a dozen or more
children of her own to feed, took me to her house till it was settled what
was to become of me. She and her husband laughed at the idea of the
tall sailor coming to take me away.
"I know what sailors are," said the husband; "they'll just chuck a
handful of silver to the first beggar who asks them for it, and then
they'll go away and forget all about it! Maybe your friend was only
after joking with you, and is off to sea long ago!"
"Oh no! he meant what he said," I replied; "I know that by the look of
his face. He's a kind man, I'm certain!"
"It may be better for us all if he comes, but it's not very likely," was the
answer. Still I trusted that my new friend would not deceive me.
I was standing in front of the cottage which was next to that my father
and I had inhabited, when my heart beat quick at seeing a tall figure
turn a corner at the other end of the street. I was certain it was my sailor
friend. "It's him! It's him! I knew he'd come!" I shouted, and ran
forward to meet him.
He smiled as he saw my eagerness. "You've not forgotten me, I see,
lad," said he; "well, come along. It's all arranged; and if you're in the
same mind, you've only to say so, and we'll enter you aboard the
Rainbow!"
I told the tall sailor that I was ready to go wherever he liked to take me.
This seemed to please him. After I had wished the neighbours, who had
been so kind to me, good-bye, he took me by the hand, and led me
rapidly along in the direction of the docks. Before reaching them, we

entered a house where some old gentlemen were sitting at a table. One
of them asked me if I wished to go to sea and become an admiral. I
replied, "Yes, surely," though I did not know what being an admiral
meant; and on this the other old gentlemen laughed, and the first wrote
something on a paper, which he handed across the table.
On this a sunburnt fine-looking man stepped forward and wrote on the
paper, and I was then told that I was bound apprentice to Captain
Helfrich, of the Rainbow brig. The fine-looking man was, I found,
Captain Helfrich. "Well, that matter is squared now!" exclaimed the tall
sailor; "so, youngster, we'll aboard at once, before either you or I get
into mischief."
On our way to the brig, we stopped at a slop clothes-shop. "Here, Mr
Levi! I want an outfit for this youngster," said my friend, taking me in.
"Let his duds be big enough, that he may have room to grow in them.
Good food and sea air will soon make him sprout like a young
cabbage."
The order was literally fulfilled, and I speedily found myself the
possessor of a new suit of sailors' clothes, of two spare shirts, and
sundry other articles of dress. My friend made me put them on at once.
"Now, do the old ones up in that handkerchief," said he; "we'll find a
use for them before long."
The spare new things he did up into a bundle, and carried it himself.
"I did not want the Jew to get your old clothes, for which he would
have allowed nothing," said he, as we left the shop. "We shall soon