d served his master so well that the latter willingly
remitted the three years' articles of apprenticeship, Cook now followed
his destiny to the sea. According to the world's standards, the change
seemed progress backward. He was articled to a ship-owner of Whitby as
a common seaman on a coaler sailing between Newcastle and London. One
can see such coalers any day--black as smut, grimed from prow to stern,
with workmen almost black shovelling coal or hoisting tackling--pushing
in and out among the statelier craft of any seaport. It is this stage
in a great man's career which is the test. Is the man sure enough of
himself to leave everything behind, and jump over the precipice into
the unknown? If ever he wishes to return to what he has left, he will
have just the height of this jump to climb back to the old place. The
old place is a certainty. The unknown may engulf in failure. He {178}
must chance that, and all for the sake of a faith in himself, which has
not yet been justified; for the sake of a vague star leading into the
misty unknown. He knows that he could have been successful in the old
place. He does not know that he may not be a failure in the new place.
Art, literature, science, commerce--in all--it is the men and women who
have dared to risk being failures that have proved the mainspring of
progress. Cook was sure enough of himself to exchange shopkeeper's
linen for the coal-heaver's blue jeans, to risk following the star of
his destiny to the sea.

Presently, the commonplace, grimy duties which he must fulfil are
taking him to Dublin, to Liverpool, to Norway; and by the time he is
twenty-two, he knows the Baltic trade well, and has heard all the pros
and cons of the furious cackle which the schools have raised over that
expedition of Bering's to the west coast of America. By the time he is
twenty-four he is a first mate on the coal boats. Comes another vital
change! When he left the shop, he felt all that he had to do to follow
his destiny was to go to sea. Now the star has led him up to a blank
wall. The only promotion he can obtain on these merchantmen is to a
captainship; and the captaincy on a small merchantman will mean pretty
much a monotonous flying back and forward like a shuttle between the
ports of Europe and England.

Cook took a resolution that would have cost any {179} man but one with
absolute singleness of purpose a poignant effort. At the age of
twenty-seven, he decided to