"
"Born there, sir."
He laid down the pen and leaned back to look at me as it were for the
first time.
"Not many of your nationality in our service, I should think. I never
remember meeting one either before or after I left the sea. Don't
remember ever hearing of one. An inland people, aren't you?"
I said yes--very much so. We were remote from the sea not only by
situation, but also from a complete absence of indirect association, not
being a commercial nation at all, but purely agricultural. He made then
the quaint reflection that it was "a long way for me to come out to
begin a sea life"; as if sea life were not precisely a life in which one
goes a long way from home.
I told him, smiling, that no doubt I could have found a ship much nearer
my native place, but I had thought to myself that if I was to be a
seaman, then I would be a British seaman and no other. It was a matter
of deliberate choice.
He nodded slightly at that; and, as he kept on looking at me
interrogatively, I enlarged a little, confessing that I had spent a
little time on the way in the Mediterranean and in the West Indies. I
did not want to present myself to the British Merchant Service in an
altogether green state.
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