"Well, my dear boy, Captain Barker is rather short of apprentices, and he
has no objection to taking you in place of one if you will make yourself
useful. He is a first-rate seaman. You will imbibe a vast deal of useful
knowledge and gain a free passage, and when we reach the Indies I shall
be able, I doubt not, by means of my connections, to assist you in the
first steps of what, I trust, will prove a successful career."

"Then, who is supercargo?"

"Unluckily that greatness has been thrust upon me. Unluckily, I say; for
the office is not one that befits a former fellow of King's College at
Cambridge. Yet there is an element of good luck in it, too; for, as you
know, my fortunes were at a desperately low ebb, and the emoluments of
this office, while not great, will stand me in good stead when we reach
our destination, and enable me to set you, my dear boy--to borrow from
the vernacular--on your legs."

"You have deceived me, then!"

"Nay, nay, you do bear me hard, young man. To be disappointed is not the
same thing as to be deceived. True, you are not, as I hoped, supercargo,
but the conditions are not otherwise altered. You wished to go to
India--well, Zephyr's jocund breezes, as Catullus hath it, will waft you
thither: we are flying to the bright cities of the East. No fragile bark
is this, carving a dubious course through the main, as Seneca, I think,
puts it. No, 'tis an excellent vessel, with an excellent captain, who
will steer a certain course, who fears not the African blast nor the
grisly Hyades nor the fury of Notus--"

Desmond did not await the end of Diggle's peroration. It was then too