Already we have more than our number, and to avoid the importunity of the many who wish to go, or of my powerful friends who desired to place sons or relations in my charge, I have been obliged to swear that I would take no other sailor, in addition to those already shipped.
"You are, however, young," he said, as he marked the change in the boy's face; "and I promise you that if I come back, and again sail on an expedition like that on which I now start, that you shall be one of my crew.

What is your name, lad?
I hear them call you Otter, and truly the beast is no better swimmer than you are." "My name, sir, is Ned Hearne.

My father is the schoolmaster here." "Will he consent, think you, to your taking to a seafaring life ?" "Methinks he will, sir.

He knows that my heart is set upon it, for he hath often said if I loved my lessons with one-tenth of the love I bear for the sea, I should make a good scholar, and be a credit to him." "I will not forget you, lad.

Trust me, and when you hear of my return, fail not to send a reminder, and to claim a place in my next adventure." Ned Hearne, delighted at the assurance, ran off at full speed to the cottage where his father resided, at the end of the village.
The dominie, who was an old man, wore the huge tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles of the time.
"Wet again," he said, as his son burst into the room in which he was sitting, studying a Greek tome.