I hail from Deal, where my father was highly respected, not on account of his worldly wealth, for of that he had but small store, but because he was an honest, upright, God-fearing man, who did his duty to his neighbour, and ruled his family with discretion.
And my mother--she was a mother!--so loving and gentle and considerate; she kept us, her children, of whom there were nine, I being the third, in excellent order, and yet we scarcely discovered the means she employed. We trusted her implicitly; we knew that she entered into all our sorrows as well as into our joys and amusements. How carefully she bound up a cut finger or bathed a bruised knee; or if we were trying to manufacture any toy, how ready she was to show us the best way to do the work; how warmly she admired it when finished, and how proudly she showed it to father when he came in. I was accustomed from my earliest days to the sight of ships coming into or going out of the Downs, or brought up before our town, and I used to listen with deep interest to the account of his adventures in all parts of the world with which our neighbour, Captain Bland, was wont to entertain us when he came to our house, or when we went in to take tea with him and Mrs Bland and their daughter Mary. I can, therefore, scarcely remember the time when I did not wish to become a sailor, though as my eldest brother Bill was intended for the sea, and indeed went away when I was still a little fellow, my father had thoughts of bringing me up to some trade or other. I should have been content to follow my father's wishes, or rather to have done what he believed best for me, had I been sent away inland, where I could not have heard nautical matters talked about, and where the sea and shipping would have been out of my sight. While I remained at home the desire grew stronger and stronger to become like the seafaring men I was constantly meeting--pilots, masters and mates, and boatmen--and I may venture to say that a finer race of sailors are nowhere to be found than those belonging to Deal.
Captain Bland was a thorough sailor. He dearly loved the sea, and the ship he commanded, and his crew--at least he took a warm interest in their welfare--but he loved his wife and daughter more, and for their sakes he remained on shore longer than he would otherwise have done. Still, he made three or four voyages while I was a youngster, and he always spoke as if he had no intention of abandoning the sea until he had laid by a competency for old age. How many a master says the same, and goes on ploughing the ocean in the delusive hope of reaping a harvest till the great reaper gathers him into his garner.
Notwithstanding my predilections in favour of a sea life, I was still undecided as to my future career, when one winter's day, after school hours, as I was taking a run out on the London Road, I saw coming along towards me a fine broad, well-built lad, with a sun-burnt countenance, and a stick having a bundle at the end of it over his shoulder. His dress, and the jaunty way he walked, with a slight roll, as if trying to steady himself on a tossing deck, showed me that he was a sailor. We were going to pass each other, when he looked hard at me, and I looked hard at him. Suddenly it struck me that I knew his features; so I stopped, and he stopped, and we gazed into one another's faces.
"Can you be brother Bill?" I exclaimed.
"Bill's my name, my hearty. And you!--are you brother Jack? Yes, I'm sure you are!" And grasping my hand he wrung it till I thought he would have wrung it off, while, half-laughing, half-crying for pleasure, he asked, "How's father and mother, and Susan and Jane, and Mary and Dick, and the rest of them; and little Tommy?"
He was the youngest of us, and could just toddle when Bill went away. Thus he ran on, asking question after question, which I answered as well as I could, while we went towards home at a pretty round trot--he eager to get there and see them all again, and I almost as eager to have the satisfaction of rushing in and shouting out, "Here's Bill come back again!"
I need not describe the way Bill was received. No one seemed to think that they could make enough of him. Mary, a small girl, sat on his knee at supper, with one arm round his neck, and ever and anon gave him a kiss and a hug, exclaiming, "Dear Bill, we are so glad you're come back;" and Susan and Jane placed themselves one on each side that they might the better help him to what was on the table; and we bigger boys listened eagerly to all he said; and father watched him with pride, and the light shone brighter than ever from mother's eyes as she gazed at him; and little Tommy came toddling into the room in his night-gown (having scrambled out of his crib) saying, "Tommy want see dat brodder Bill really come home--all right--dere he is--hurrah!" and off he ran again with Susan at his heels, but he had nimbly climbed into his nest before she caught him.
As to myself, I looked at Bill with unbounded admiration, and eagerly listened to every word which dropped from his lips. He had plenty to talk about, and wonders of all sorts to describe, for he had been in the Indian Sea, and visited China, and the west coast of America, and several islands in the Pacific, and gone round the world. How he rattled on! I thought Drake, Cavendish, and Dampier, Lord Anson and Captain Cook were nothing to him--at all events, that I would far rather hear the narrative of his adventures than read theirs.
I was almost vexed with Captain Bland for coming in one evening, even though Mary accompanied him, because Bill became suddenly far more reticent than usual in his presence, if not altogether dumb, and when he did speak, merely described in a modest tone some very commonplace occurrences. I could not make it out. After some time, when Bill was out of ear-shot, I heard Captain Bland remark to father that he liked lads who did not speak about themselves. It was a pretty sure sign that they were better doers than talkers. "He'll succeed, will that lad of yours; he's kept his eyes open wherever he's been; he'll make a smart officer one of these days," he added.
I was much pleased when Captain Bland thus spoke of Bill, and I thought to myself, what would he have said if he had heard him describe some of the wonderful adventures he had narrated to us. When I afterwards told Bill what the old captain had said, and my ideas on the subject, he laughed heartily.
"Why, Jack, he would have shut me up pretty smartly," he answered. "Old cocks don't allow young ones to crow in their presence."
Bill made ample amends for his previous silence when we were together, knowing that I was never tired of listening to him. I could think about nothing else but what he had told me, and I made up my mind that I would far rather become a sailor than follow any other calling. I told him so.
"Well, Jack, I think you're right," he said; "I wouldn't change if I had the offer--no, not to become Prime Minister of England or the first merchant in the land. Remember, though, it isn't all smooth sailing. You must expect rough weather as well as fine; but if you're determined to go I'll speak to father, and I don't think that he'll refuse you."
Bill fulfilled his promise, and father, after consulting Captain Bland, agreed to let me go, provided I was of the same mind when I was old enough to be apprenticed. Neither our mother nor our sisters had a word to say against my wishes; nor had Mary Bland.
"I wish that I was a boy, Jack, that I might go also," she exclaimed. "We shall be very, very sorry to lose you," she added after a short silence; "but then, you know, you will come back, and how glad we all shall be to see you again."
Bill told me how well pleased he was that father had given me leave to go to sea. "But I want you to study navigation at once, so that you may become an officer as soon as possible. You'll never get on without that," he said, and producing an old, well-thumbed edition of Hamilton Moore's "Epitome of Navigation," he added, "I'll give you this, Jack. It has served me, and will serve you well if you master it as I've done." How I did prize that book! I doubt if I ever valued anything more in my life. My brother, I should have said, had been at an excellent nautical school in Deal, established a few years before by several officers of the Royal Navy, where he gained much credit by his intelligence and attention to his studies. As soon as it was finally settled that I was to go to sea I was sent to the same school on the day my brother left home to go on his next voyage. I easily passed in, as I knew all the simple rules of arithmetic thoroughly, and was pretty well up in decimals. Having learned from my brother that the use of logarithms and the first principles of geometry would soon be taught me at school, with his help I had at once set to work on them, and after he went away I continued my studies in the evenings when other boys were at play, so that I quickly mastered all those necessary preliminaries. I consequently got over them at school with a rapidity which astonished the master, and with no little pride I heard the inspector, a naval captain, remark, "First-rate boy--beats his brother--be a master in a jiffy."
The result of my working so hard out of hours was that at our annual examination I took the first prize, and was shortly afterwards pronounced fit to be sent to sea. As I still held to my wish to go, my father at once wrote to the owners of several first-class South Sea whalers, who immediately agreed to send me as an apprentice on board one of their ships, the "Eagle," Captain Hake, just about to sail for the Pacific.
On the night before my departure I slept but little for thinking of the novel and wonderful scenes I expected to go through, and I am pretty sure that my kind mother did not close her eyes, but from a different cause. She was thinking of parting from me, and of the dangers to which I was to be exposed. She was praying that I might be preserved from them I know, for she told me so. At three o'clock in the morning she called me up, that I might be ready to start with my father by the mail coach for Margate, whence we were to go up the river to London by steamer. How earnestly did my pious father at family prayers, which he never omitted, commend me to the care of Him who watches over all the creatures of His hands! I felt that there was a reality in that prayer, such as I had never before comprehended.
Breakfast over, and parting embraces given, we started, and rattling away to Margate, were soon on board the "Royal Adelaide" on our way up the Thames. Bitter as was the cold, I was too much occupied in running about and examining everything connected with the steamer to mind it. The helm, the machinery, the masts and rigging, the huge paddle-wheels, the lead and lead-line, all came under my notice. As I was in no ways bashful I made the acquaintance of several persons on board, and among others I spoke to a lad considerably my senior, whose dress and well-bronzed face and hands showed me that he was a sailor.
