nly that his father had made clocks,
and had a starling in the parlour, which could whistle "The North
Countrie"; all else had been blotted out in these years of hardship and
cruelties. He had a strange notion of the dry land, picked up from
sailors' stories: that it was a place where lads were put to some kind
of slavery called a trade, and where apprentices were continually lashed
and clapped into foul prisons. In a town he thought every second person
a decoy, and every third house a place in which seamen would be drugged
and murdered. To be sure, I would tell him how kindly I had myself been
used upon that dry land he was so much afraid of, and how well fed and
carefully taught both by my friends and my parents: and if he had been
recently hurt, he would weep bitterly and swear to run away; but if he
was in his usual crack-brain humour, or (still more) if he had had a
glass of spirits in the round-house, he would deride the notion.

It was Mr. Riach (Heaven forgive him!) who gave the boy drink; and it
was, doubtless, kindly meant; but besides that it was ruin to his
health, it was the pitifullest thing in life to see this unhappy,
unfriended creature staggering, and dancing, and talking he knew not
what. Some of the men laughed, but not all; others would grow as black
as thunder (thinking, perhaps, of their own childhood or their own
children) and bid him stop that nonsense, and think what he was doing.
As for me, I felt ashamed to look at him, and the poor child still comes
about me in my dreams.

All this time, you should know, the Covenant was meeting continual
head-winds and tumbling up and down against head-seas, so that the
scuttle was almost constantly shut, and the forecastle lighted only by a
swinging lantern on a beam. There was constant labour for all hands; the
sails had to be made and shortened every hour; the strain told on the
men's temper; there was a growl of quarrelling all day long from berth
to berth; and as I was never allowed to set my foot on deck, you can
picture to yourselves how weary of my life I grew to be, and how
impatient for a change.

And a change I was to get, as you shall hear; but I must first tell of a
conversation I had with Mr. Riach, which put a little heart in me to
bear my troubles. Getting him in a favourable stage of drink (for indeed
he never looked near me when he was sober) I pledged him to secrecy, and
told him my whole story.

He declared it was like a ballad; that