"but seemingly they grow high in
those parts. And what made ye steer for Bristowe, if I might ask?"

Mr. Vetch had warned me against confiding in strangers; but there
was something so honest in the old seaman's look that I, who have
rarely been wrong in my instinctive judgment of men, determined to
trust him, and told him so much of my story as I thought necessary.

The result was that he took me under his wing, so to speak. He
spent the whole morning with me, explaining to me the differences
in build and rig between the vessels lying there, telling me a
great deal about the duties of a seaman and the ways of life at
sea. He counseled me very earnestly to give up my design and seek
an employment on shore.

"Sea life bean't for the likes of you," he said. "I don't know
nothing about lawyers, saving them as they call sea lawyers, and
they're rogues; but you'd better be a land lawyer than go to sea.
'Tis all very well for them as begin as officers, but for the men
the life bean't fit for a dog. Aboard ship you'd meet some very
rough company--very rough indeed. I don't pretend to be better nor
most, but there be some terrible bad ones at sea. Of course it
depends mostly on the skipper, but even where the skipper's a good
'un--and there be good and bad--he can't have his eyes everywhere,
and I've knowed youngsters so bad used on board that they'd sooner
ha' bin dead. Not but what you mightn't stand a chance, being a big
fellow of your inches."

What the old fellow said did not in the least shake my resolution.
The only effect of it was to turn my inclination rather in favor of
the merchant service than the king's navy, to which I had inclined
hitherto. In a king's ship I might certainly share in some
fighting, which has ever great attractions to a healthy boy; but
then I should have little chance of seeing the world unless
specially favored by circumstances, for the ship might be kept
cruising about, looking for the French who never came. Whereas in a
merchant ship I might see India, and even China, and my new friend
told me fine stories of the fortunes to be made in those distant
parts by the lucky ones, besides which I felt a longing to see
strange and far-off lands and peoples for the mere pleasure of it.
To take service with an East Indiaman most hit my fancy, and when
the sailor told me that London and Southampton were the ports for
the East India trade, I began to think of working my passage to one
or the other