We started along beside the counter, which seemed endless, and my father was just opening the gate when suddenly we heard the sound of voices, as if a door had been opened. The voices stopped, and a man stumped toward us vigorously. I should say now that he was a youngish man, but then I thought him very old. He was about forty, with a close-clipped brown beard growing nearly up to his eyes, which were gray and piercing, looking out from between half-closed lids. Those eyes gave the impression of being at a great distance, and there was a spark of light in them so that they always made me think of a lighthouse with its cone of light. Even now I never see a lighthouse at a distance of three or four miles that I do not think of Captain Nelson’s eyes. “Hello, Tim,” he said, with no apparent intention of stopping. But my father blocked the gateway. He was a good head taller than Captain Nelson. “I ’d like to have a word with you, Cap’n, if you have time. I won’t keep you long. Don’t you want a boy?” {18} “A boy? One of your boys? This the one?” He took me by the arm and made me face him. I was smiling nervously. “You want to go whaling?” “Yes, sir,” I said as steadily as I could. “That is, I want to go if you ’re going to the South Seas.” Captain Nelson laughed. “No Ar’tic in yours, eh? What you want to go to the South Seas for? We don’t lie ’round under palm trees and eat breadfruit and watch the surf breaking on coral sands, like the pictures in your geography books. What ’you been getting hold of?” I squirmed and got very red, and stammered and said nothing. Captain Nelson laughed again, and gave me a little shake and let me go. “Well, Tim, no need to ask about any of your boys. You recommend him, I suppose?” “I do, Cap’n. I ’m sorry he ’s taken with whaling, and that ’s the truth; and it ’s rather sudden, for he ’s only told me within the last half-hour, and his mother and I will hate to have him go off for three or four years. But if that ’s what he wants I ’d better help than try to hinder him.” Captain Nelson nodded. “May be five years, Tim. No knowing.” He turned suddenly to me. “What ’s your name?” “Tim, sir.” “Well, little Tim, I guess we can find room for you. May not get the crew in time to sail to-night. Probably won’t. But you ’d better be on hand and keep an eye out for us. Bright and early in the morning, anyway.” He nodded again, got his clearance papers, and stumped out. I stared stupidly after him. My father sighed. “Well, Timmie, that was soon done. We ’ll be late for dinner. Come along.” And I said nothing, but pegged along beside him down the echoing stone stairs, my elation rapidly oozing out at {19} my finger-tips. I was beginning to think of the other side of it—his side and my mother’s—and to be more than half sorry for my haste; but what is done is done. Boys—and girls too—are thoughtlessly cruel, fortunately for them and the world.