You can have no idea how many messages were given me for him. Of course everyone in the village knew I was going, and for the last fortnight, I should think, half the village had sent "best respects to the Captain", and news about their children or gardens or the fishing. I stuck them all down in a notebook so as not to forget them—my mother advised me to do this. At the station old Puddock, the station master, gave me a pot of cranberry jam his wife had made—she’d been cook up at the House before she married Puddock—"with our best respects for the Cap’en, Master Dick, and tell him we’re both fair to middling, and I got first prize at Barnton Show for the pigs". Out came the notebook again, and we were off at last—my mother and I.
But the funniest thing of all happened at the next station—Bodington—for there Ned the Poacher—he was an awful nuisance for miles round, and spent half the year in prison—came sheepishly to the carriage and asked me to tell the Captain that he and his pals wouldn’t be too hard on the pheasants this year, as they knew he was coming home for next year’s shooting. "Tell the Cap’en they birds be mighty strong and healthy, and there’ll be plenty of ’em next year when he comes home," and he shuffled away. I suppose he hadn’t the face to come to me at Upton Overy itself.
I wasn’t going to put that down in the notebook, but my mother said I had better do so.
When we went down to the docks next day and went aboard the _Marmora_, the very first person I saw was Jim Rawlings—on his way out to join another cruiser—and in the excitement of seeing him I hardly wished my mother "goodbye" properly, and it was only when the _Marmora_ shoved off and left her standing alone in the rain, on the dock wall, that I felt what an awful brute I was, and wanted to jump across the bit of water just to say "goodbye" once again.
There were four cadets on board, as well; going out to join different ships. A lieutenant was in charge of all of us, and jolly nasty he made himself too; and we were all jolly glad when we found his ship lying at Singapore, and he cleared out. I’m not going to tell you all about the voyage. It would take too long, and there are too many exciting things for you to hear. For me they began there, and it was Jim who made the discovery. He’d got hold of a Singapore newspaper, and suddenly came flying along the deck, whooping like a madman, and shoved it into my hands. You can imagine how excited I was, for among the telegrams was this: