“That brat, axin’ your parding, sir, is the son o’ the Widow Stubbs at Newport—a excellent woman, and a good hand at book-larnin’, as well as at the spinnin’ wheel. Her husband was killed in one o’ the fust scrimmages o’ the war, and this ’ere brat, he run away to jine the ’Merican navy and was took on the Betsey along with me. I knowed his mother well, and I’ve kinder kep’ my eye on the young one. He is a right handy sort o’ boy, and he can sing a lot o’ chunes I’ve larned him. He can sing all the old songs and two or three ‘Tid re I’s’ I’ve set him.”
“Pipe up, youngster,” said the captain; “I’d like to hear one of the old songs again. Give me ‘When the Wind at Night Whistles o’er the Deep.’”
Little Dicky Stubbs looked scared to death. His mouth came open, but no sound issued. Jack Bell, giving him a nudge that nearly broke his ribs, whispered:—
“Didn’t you hear the cap’n tell you to pipe up, you mutinous brat?”
Thus adjured, Dicky began in a deliciously sweet but rather uncertain voice:[4]
When the wind at night whistles o’er the deep And sings to landsmen dreary, The sailor, fearless, goes to sleep Or takes his watch most cheery. Snoozing here, Tossing there, Steadily, readily, Cheerily, merrily, Still from care and thinking free, Is a sailor’s life at sea.
Before he reached the third line Dicky’s courage, and his voice too, returned and he sang like some sweet-throated bird the next verse:—
When the ship, d’ye see, becomes a wreck, And landsmen hoist the boat, sir, The sailor scorns to quit the deck While there’s a single plank afloat, sir.
Captain Forrester, leaning his head on his hand, listened to the song that carried him back to his midshipman days, and watched the boy whose young fresh voice echoed through the low-pitched cabin. Dicky was unmistakably a child of the people, but his honest face, his bright, intelligent eyes, and his clean though ragged attire made him a prepossessing little fellow.
“You may go now,” said Captain Forrester to Jack Bell, and meanwhile giving Dicky a bright shilling, “but do not forget what I have told you, and also that you have got off very well. As for that lad, take him to his mother and tell her to keep him at home until he has cut his wisdom teeth.”