“Not until this time next year,” said his father. “I don’t suppose you’ll ever rest contentedly until you have tried it out and found that a sailor’s life isn’t a bit as they say it is in story-books. I went through it. I thought I was going to have a wonderful time when I joined my first ship. She was a square-rigger, of the old-fashioned type. I remember I had a coat with some brass buttons on it, and I had an idea that I should spend most of my time on the poop, or the fo’c’sle-head, looking through a long telescope. But they set me on to peeling potatoes, and kept me at it though I was so seasick I didn’t care whether I lived or died. Then the mate told me to dress up, as I had to do something special for the captain. I put on my best duds, including the coat with the brass buttons, and they started me on the job of tarring the rigging. By the time I’d got through with that, and after I’d upset the tar-bucket when the ship gave an extra hard roll, I was so messed up from head to foot I hardly knew my own name, though I’d learnt that sailoring didn’t consist chiefly of looking smart in brass buttons and navigating the ship.” “But you didn’t give up the sea for years and years after that, did you?” the boy persisted. “No, I’ll admit that, though there was many a time I’d have done ’most anything to get back home and put on some dry clothes. The grub wasn’t too good, either, in those days, and the older hands got the pick of what was going. Ship-owners don’t believe in overfeeding their crews. The men might get too fat to shin up the rigging if they had three square meals a day, so they’re given ship’s biscuits to keep ’em in condition and cut expenses down.” Dave plied his father with questions about life afloat, and Captain Hallard gave him as accurate a picture as he could of routine on board ship. To the boy it all seemed fascinating, including the hard, dirty work and the “salt horse” which, he gathered, together with the extremely hard biscuits, formed the staple diet on many craft. The only thing worrying him was that he had to start at high school and wait a whole year before he would be allowed to eat “salt horse” and feel the motion of the boat under him as she nosed her way out of the harbor, past that flashing light in the distance at Sandy Hook, and carried him to those entrancing distant lands of which he had heard so much.