re aboard, what would you have said
then?"

To these sage reflections the owner did not reply.

The honesty and courage of this able seaman were never questioned, and
the following incident bears good witness to the first quality. Upon
one occasion he was sailing for Lisbon in a well-armed privateer, when
a couple of East India trading ships offered him L1,000 ($5,000) if he
would act as their guard and protect them from the enemy.

"Gentlemen," said he to the captain of these vessels, "I shall never
take a reward for what I consider it my duty to do without one. I
consider it my bounden duty to conduct you both safely into port, for
you are both British ships, and I am engaged to fight the enemies of
our King."

So he convoyed them safely into port and would not take even the
smallest present, in recompense for his services.

As a fighter he had no superior. War is simply glorified sport and
those who are best trained athletically can usually win upon the
battle-field. Did not Wellington say, "The battle of Waterloo was won
upon the foot-ball grounds of Eton and Harrow?" Which was another way
of saying that the boys who had learned to stand punishment upon the
athletic field, could take it manfully and well upon the field of
battle.

Walker believed in athletic exercise and made his sailors continually
practice both gunnery and work with the cutlass. They were always in
training and always prepared. That is the reason why they won. As you
know, if you want to win in athletics you have to train hard and
practice daily. If you want to win at warfare you have to do likewise.
The most athletic nation is the nation which will win in the long
fight, providing that it has sufficient resources and money to carry
out a war, once that it has placed its men in the field. It takes a
great deal of money to fight a war, but it takes trained men also, and
those who are the most fit will win every time.

The English are an athletic nation, an island nation, and great
numbers of her people have had to follow the sea as a matter of
course. Hence England has always had a vast quantity of well-trained
seamen at her beck and call. For this reason she has been more
successful upon the ocean than many of her neighbors. Will she
continue to be?

_If she continues to breed men like George Walker there is little
reason to doubt that she will always be a winner in sea fighting._

As for this famous mariner, little is known of his lat