Examination-day passed off as it always did at the professor’s school,
creditably, if not brilliantly, for teachers and scholars. Aleck was
decidedly the star, but Carter and Davis both did well; and in the
lower classes Hal and Tom came off with a very respectable score and
some flying colors. Tom had kept out of Hal’s way as he would have
avoided rocks and shallows if he had been putting to sea; and Hal was
for once so entirely engrossed in keeping his own lookout, that he had
no leisure to watch for slips in his neighbors, or to enjoy them if
they happened to occur. There was enough for the boys to talk over for
at least the first week of holidays, and Carter lost very little time
in getting hold of Aleck for a talk about past, present, and future.
The future had the best of it, though, and he was jubilant over the
prospect that it gave.
“Isn’t that what you call pretty jolly?” he went on. “Carter & Co. have
consented at last, and are going to give me a chance in life, instead
of making me into a wooden thing mounted on a stool and doing short
sums in arithmetic for them all day! Just imagine me standing on the
quarter-deck and giving orders to every soul on board, and feeling my
vessel bound over the blue waves as I direct!”
Aleck laughed.
“Do you expect to take command the day you go aboard?”
“Well, no, it must be confessed, that isn’t the usual way. I’ve got to
share my mess with the roughest of them for a while, and work my way
up; but I shall have a command just as soon as I am fit for it.”
“And when will that be?” asked Aleck.
“When I understand the ship and the ship’s work. A man isn’t fit to
give orders until he knows how everything, to the very last twist of a
rope, ought to be done, and how to do it himself, too.”
“And is that all?”
“I don’t know,” said Carter, a little puzzled; “that’s what the
officers say. Shouldn’t you think that was about the whole of it?”
“It may be,” said Aleck; “but I was always taught that a man wasn’t
ready to command others until he had learned to command himself.”
“Pshaw!” said Carter. “What a fellow you are to preach! I don’t believe
I could tell you what time it is, that it wouldn’t give you a handle
for a sermon or a lecture, whatever it may be. But the truth is, you
hit the nail on the head so well that I can’t help liking it every
time. I’ll treasure that up, and what you said the other day about
making a man and a gentleman of myself.”
“By becoming a Christian!” said Aleck.
“Well, I suppose so, only it sounds so much like prigging to put it
that way.”
“What sounds like prigging? If a ship-captain should offer to take
you under his special instruction after you get aboard, and teach you
all he knew, and make a first-rate officer of you, would you call it
prigging if you were to try your best to learn, and come as near his
own mark as you could?”
“No, indeed! And if I can only get a chance on the Cumbermede, I should
be proud to be even the shadow of the captain, for I tell you what it
is, I don’t believe a finer officer ever stepped the quarter-deck! But
he wont notice me, not for a year at least. It would be beneath him, of
course.”
“Well, I’ll tell you who will notice you, and not think it beneath him,
either, and that is the Great Captain, and you know what he is; all the
hosts of heaven call him glorious. You can study him and study with
him and wear his colors, and get closer to his standard every year, and
not be very much of a prig either.”
“And is that what you call being a Christian? I thought it was all in
drawing down your face and quoting Scripture, and never doing anything
to have a good time.”
“I don’t believe you thought any such thing,” said Aleck, “you have
too much sense for that. A Christian is a follower of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and nothing more or less, except that you can’t very well
follow him without believing in him first and loving him afterwards.”
“Well, a fellow might look at it that way, and not be a milksop, after
all; and I’ve got to get hold of something or other that will carry
me a peg beyond where I was that day we got the professor into such a
rage. It wasn’t the rage I cared for, but I did feel so contemptibly
mean; and an idea came across me that there must be some different rule
a fellow could work by; but I don’t know as I should ever have seen it
any plainer if you hadn’t given me a lift.”
“You’ll want more lifts than I can give you,” said Aleck; “it’s only
the Commander-in-chief that can take raw recruits like us and bring
them up to the ranks; but he’ll never think it beneath him to help the
lowest of us, you may be sure of that.”
A week from that day the Cumbermede weighed anchor, and Carter,
regularly shipped as ordinary seaman, stood on her deck, the desire of
his heart accomplished.
“Good-by, old fellow, I shall take that sermon along!” were his last
words to Aleck; and Aleck, after watching the vessel towed well out
into the stream, turned and made his way back to town, and presented
himself for his own enrolment behind the counter at his Uncle Ralph’s.
He could hardly realize he was there at first; it seemed more like a
joke played off for the day than a life-long decision, and he could not
quite persuade himself that he had set sail for a longer voyage than
Carter’s. But as the day wore on, the earnest way his uncle took of
setting him to work at this and that, and the occasional quiet glance
of pleasure that he cast towards him, began to make him feel that it
was a real thing to one party at least, and would soon become so to the
other.
“I tell you what it is, Nelly,” he said, when business hours were over
at last, and he was at home once more, “I feel as if I had taken a
flying leap somewhere, and hadn’t quite found out what sort of ground
I was going to strike yet. It’s a pretty different thing from old
times, anyhow.”
“And different from what we thought new times were going to be, once,”
said Nelly, looking up half regretfully from her work.
“Well, if you could just get one look at Uncle Ralph’s face, you’d
think the difference was pretty good, and I’m sure papa would too. The
only trouble is, Uncle Ralph hasn’t found out yet what a stupid fellow
he has taken up. I declare I thought my poor head would be turned there
to-day; chemistry and science went clear out of sight, and it was
nothing but weights and measures and compatibilities and all the rest.
But I assure you there’s some pleasure in seeing how the best doctors
in the city hang by Uncle Ralph, Doctor Thorndyke among the rest.”
“Have you been to the doctor’s within a day or two, Aleck?”
“Yes,” said Aleck, with a sudden change of tone.
“No better yet, Aleck?”
“Oh, I suppose so; but it’s a horrid shame to see the way he is. He
never had known a well day in his life till the doctor took hold of
him; but he said there was no reason why he shouldn’t, and he went
to work and did everything that could be thought of for six months or
more, and had just got him where he was finding out what life was--of
course not to be quite as strong as other people, but ready to feel
pretty well and have a good time with the rest of the world; and now
there he is, just able to creep about the house or look at a book now
and then, the old pain ten times worse than ever, and what’s more, the
doctor don’t believe he can ever bring him round to where he was again.
It’s more than he had much hope of at one time to get him through at
all. And that isn’t the worst of it, either; he behaves like a little
man, but I don’t believe he’ll ever forget what happened an hour as
long as he lives.”
“Oh, he _must_ forget it, Aleck. Bring him up here, and see if we can’t
make him.”
“I don’t know,” said Aleck, smiling. “I invited him once, but I don’t
know as I can flatter you by telling you what objection he had.”
“Well, only once persuade him, and I’m sure we can find some way to
make his objections vanish.”