Old Jack | Page 4

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 fall in with a little ragged fellow, to whom they'll be a rich prize."
As we went along, two or three boys begged of us, and pointed to their rags as a plea for their begging. "They'll not do," said he; "the better clothes would ruin them."
At last, passing along