I must have ill luck indeed, if I
lit upon a captain more cruel than Mr. Crayshaw. I did not know exactly
how it was to be accomplished, but I knew enough to know that I could
not aim at the Royal Navy. Of course I should have preferred it. I had
never seen naval officers, but if they were like officers in the army,
like Colonel Jervois, for instance, it was with such a port and bearing
that I would fain have carried myself when I grew up to be a man. I
guessed, however, that money and many other considerations might make it
impossible for me to be a midshipman; but I had heard of boys being
apprenticed to merchant-vessels, and I resolved to ask my father if he
would so apprentice me.
He refused, and he accompanied his refusal with an unfavourable
commentary on my character and conduct, which was not the less bitter
because the accusations were chiefly general.
This sudden fancy for the sea--well, if it were not a sudden fancy, but
a dream of my life, what a painful instance it afforded of my habitual
want of frankness!--This long-concealed project which I had suddenly
brought to the surface--I had talked about it to my mother years ago,
had I, but it had distressed her, and even to my father, but he had
snubbed me?--then I had been deliberately fostering aims and plans to
which I had always known that my parents would be opposed.
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