"I nearly dropped the receiver when he said that. Go to sea! People in residential suburbs didn't go to sea!
"'I'll come round and talk to you,' I said.
"I went round and found him in the office. He was a fierce old chap, burnt black with sun, and with hair grey as the sea. He was enjoying his life apparently, bossing things in that office. But he told me at once that he could do no more than give me a chance to start at the bottom. I must work up and pass the Board of Trade tests for each grade. I give him credit for painting the picture as dark as he could. He even suggested I should try and get another draughtsman's job if I was afraid of going through the mill. But I didn't know enough to be afraid, and asked him off-hand when he would need me.
"'We don't need you,' he said, as if surprised. 'We can get a couple of thousand young fellows to-morrow if we want them. It's up to you.'
"That was the first slap in the face. I sat there in that great gloomy vault of an office in Fenchurch Street, looking at the half-models of ships and a map of the docks at Monte Video on the walls, and wondering what I should do. I was not hesitating, you understand, because of pride. No, that was gone. My brother, when he saw Gladys home, had done for that. It was more like a fear gripping at me. I was scared at letting go of my professional easy-going life. I'd never been on a ship since I'd been born on one. I knew nothing about marine engineering. I hesitated because I was afraid.
"'When shall I start?' I asked after a while.
"'The _Corydon's_ in the river now,' said my uncle. 'They want a Fourth: can you get down to-night?'
"'To-night!' I said. 'I've not given notice yet!'
"'But I've nothing packed,' I whimpered. And he laughed.
"I know now why he laughed. Partly because a landsman is always rather a comic figure to a sailor, partly because he knew how I had been brought up. He had never agreed with the theory of gentility which had taken such a hold of my mother. He was as out of place in his Surbiton home as a bear in a back-yard. His daughters, my cousins, couldn't make him see the importance, in England, of gentility. When he and my father and all the rest of them had been boys on that New England farm, they had had to clear stones off the land. No stones, no dinner. And now he had a house in Surbiton, and was laughing at me, who had never lifted a stone in my life. Even in the works where I was a pupil we had always had a little private lavatory to wash and change in. He laughed at me. He believed one trip would be enough for me. He didn't believe for a minute that I would stick to it.