"Able seaman! you're so thin you have to stand twice in one place to
make a shadow ... you've got the romantic boy's idea of the sea ...
but, are you willing to do hard work from four o'clock in the morning
till nine or ten at night?"
"Anything, to get to sea, sir!"
"--sure you haven't run away from home?"
"No-no, sir!"
"Then why in the devil do you want to go to sea? isn't the land good
enough?"
I took a chance and told the captain all about my romantic notions of
sea-life, travel, and adventure.
"You talk just like one of our German poets."
"I _am_ a poet," I ventured further.
The captain gave an amused whistle. But I could see that he liked me.
"To-morrow morning at four o'clock ... come back, then, and Karl, the
cabin boy, will start you in at his job. I'll promote him to boy before
the mast."
* * * * *
I spent the night at Uncle Jim's house ... he was the uncle that had
come east, years before. He was married ... a head-bookkeeper ... lived
in a flat in the Bronx.
He thought it was queer that I was over in New York, alone ... when he
came home from work, that evening....
I could keep my adventure to myself no longer. I told him all about my
going to sea. But did Duncan (my father) approve of it? Yes, I replied.
But when I refused to locate the ship I was sailing on, at first Jim
tried to bully me into telling.
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