dyard came away with just enough wholesome human rage to keep him
from sinking to despair, or to what is more unmanning, self-pity. He
had failed before, through trying to frame his life to other men's
plans. He had failed now, through trying to win success through other
men's efforts--a barnacle clinging to the hull of some craft freighted
with fortune. Perhaps, too, he fairly and squarely faced the fact that
if he was to be one whit different from the beggar for whom he had been
mistaken, he must build his own life solely and wholly on his own
efforts.

On he wandered, the roar of the great city's activities rolling past
him in a tide. His rage had time to cool. Afternoon, twilight, dark;
and still the tide rolled past him; _past him_ because like a stranded
hull rotting for lack of use, he had put himself _outside_ the tide of
human effort. He must build up his own career. That was the fact he
had wrested out of his {247} rage; but unless his abilities were to rot
in some stagnant pool, he must launch out on the great tide of human
work. Before he had taken that resolution, the roar of the city had
been terrifying--a tide that might swamp. Now, the thunder of the
world's traffic was a shout of triumph. He would launch out, let the
tide carry him where it might.

All London was resounding with the project of Cook's third voyage round
the world--the voyage that was to settle forever how far America
projected into the Pacific. Recruits were being mustered for the
voyage. It came to Ledyard in an inspiration--the new field for his
efforts, the call of the sea that paved a golden path around the world,
the freedom for shoulder-swing to do all that a man was worth. Quick
as flash, he was off--going _with_ the tide now, not a derelict, not a
stranded hull--off to shave, and wash, and respectable-ize, in order to
apply as a recruit with Cook.

In the dark, somewhere near the sailors' mean lodgings, a hand touched
him. He turned; it was the rich man's son, come profuse of apologies:
his father had returned; father and son begged to proffer both
financial aid and hospitality--Ledyard cut him short with a terse but
forcible invitation to go his own way. That the unknown colonial at
once received a berth with Cook as corporal of marines, when half the
young men of England with influence to back their applications were
eager to join the voyage, speaks well for the sincerity of the new
enthusiasm.

{248} Cook l