He recommended Johnny to qualify as a marine engineer when his apprenticeship was over, even if he intended to live a shore life. “You get yer c’tificates, an’ then you’re all right,” he would say. “An’ the better c’tificates you get the better you’ll do, afloat or ashore. So as soon as your time’s out, off you go an’ serve your year at sea as fourth or fifth of a good boat, if you can get the job. The rest’ll be easy as winkin’ to a quick young chap like you. You can draw nice an’ neat—I can put a thing down acc’rate enough, but I can’t draw it neat—and what with one thing an’ another I b’lieve you could pass your second now. I ought to ’a’ done it, p’raps, but I lose me ’ed at anythin’ like a ’xamination. An’ I never ’ad over-much schoolin’. Them compound multiplications ’ud ’ave me over ev’ry time. I s’pose you don’t think nothin’ of a compound multiplication?” Johnny admitted that he had gone a long way beyond that rule of arithmetic. “Yus,” Hicks answered. “I’ve got beyond it, too, teachin’ meself. I know ’ow to do ’em well enough. But Lord! what a strain they are! Tons, ’undredweights, quarters, pounds, ounces, an’ grains, an’ multiply ’em by five ’undred an’ twenty-seven thousan’ six ’undred an’ eighty-three. There ain’t no end to a job like that, an’ yer brain on the stretch all the time, ’cos a tick out’ll make it about a million tons wrong in the end. It ’ud send me foamin’ mad, at a ’xamination an’ all, with a chap waitin’ for the sum! Phew!” And Long Hicks’s forehead went clammy at the fancy. “But there,” he proceeded, “_you’re_ all right. You’ll knock auf your second’s examination easy as marbles; an’ then you’ll do yer chief’s ’an extry chief’s all in one, an’ then you’ll do the Board o’ Trade, an’ be a guarantee chief or anythin’ ye like! You will, by George!” and the lank man gazed in Johnny’s face (Johnny was sitting on Hicks’s bed) with much respect and admiration, being fully persuaded, in the enthusiasm of the moment, that the lad had already as good as achieved the triumphs he prophesied. But there was work to do, and Johnny did it. Mechanical drawing, when its novelty had worn off, was less delightful than the fancy-free draughtsmanship he had practised as a schoolboy, and it had an arid twang of decimals and vulgar fractions. Still, for a time there was a charm in the gradual unfolding of the inner principles of his work, and in the disclosure, piece by piece, of the cunning complication that stood ministrant on the main simplicity of a great steam engine; till the beauty of the thing in its completeness came in sight, with something of surprise in it. Though this, too, grew a commonplace as familiarity cheapened it, and then his work was work merely. And so it went till half the time of his apprenticeship was over, and he was eighteen, and a sinewy young fellow.