“Take this blank drawing-book,” he said, handing me a small pocket-book, in which a pencil was stuck. “Make a practice of drawing what you see. Draw the ships. Make sketches of the coast. You will find that such drawings will give you great pleasure when you come to be old. They will help you, too, in impressing an object on your mind. Drawing thus will give you a sense of the extraordinary wonder of the universe. It will teach you a lot of things. Now let's be off. It's time we were on board.”
When we went out of the house we were joined by three or four seamen who carried cases of bottles (probably gin bottles). We struck off towards the ship together at a brisk pace, singing one of those quick-time songs with choruses to which the sailors sometimes work. The song they sang was that very jolly one called “Leave her, Johnny.” They made such a noise with the chorus of this ditty that Mr. Jermyn was able to refresh my memory in the message to be given to Mr. Blick.
The rain had ceased before we started. When we came into the square, we saw that cressets, or big flaming port-fires, had been placed along the wharf, to give light to some seamen who were rolling casks to the barquentine. A little crowd of idlers had gathered about the workers to watch them at their job; there may have been so many as twenty people there. They stood in a pretty strong, but very unsteady light, by which I could take stock of them. I looked carefully among them for the figure of a young man in a grey Spanish hat; but he was certainly not there. The barquentine had her sails loosed, but not hoisted. Some boats were in the canal ahead, ready to tow her out. She had also laid out a hawser, by which to heave herself out with her capstan. I could see at a glance that she was at the point of sailing. As we came up the plank-gangway which led to her deck we were delayed for a moment by a seaman who was getting a cask aboard.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he said to Mr. Jermyn. “I won't keep you waiting long. This cask's about as heavy as nitre.”
“What 'a' you got in that cask, Dick?” said the boatswain, who kept a tally at the gangway.
“Nitre or bullets, I guess,” said Dick, struggling to get the cask on to the gang plank. “It's as heavy as it knows how.”