Читать книгу Frank Brown, Sea Apprentice онлайн

19 страница из 71

And he was gone, having done his best for our hero as he considered, but having certainly arranged for Master Frank as severe a series of surprises as ever boy had. For the mate turned away muttering, “All right, Captain Burns, if I don’t put him through it won’t be my fault, and if he doesn’t earn his Board of Trade he can’t blame me. Silly young ass, I suppose he’s worried his people to death to let him be a sailor, and now he thinks he is one. Well, we’ll see.”

ssss1

About a quarter of an hour after the departure of Captain Burns, Frank emerged from the boys’ house, looking and feeling desperately uncomfortable in his brand-new suit of dungaree. It was stiff and smelly and exceedingly unbecoming, and besides he had been chaffed unmercifully by the two bigger boys, who left him hardly room in the house to change, and while they smoked short pipes with all the air of veteran seamen, showed no inclination to hurry on deck as he was trying to do. They were second-voyage apprentices, and accordingly looked down upon him from a supreme height as a greenhorn, and one whom it would be at once their duty and pleasure to put through his facings, as they termed it. So he was glad to escape from them, being hot and indignant at the sudden change from quite an important member of society to one of no consequence whatever.