er
in tow."

"How I wish he would have let me go with him!" muttered Fred to himself
sorrowfully.

"No chance now, I'm afeard," remarked his companion. "The gov'nor's as
stiff as a nor'-wester. Nothin' in the world can turn him once he's made
up his mind but a regular sou'-easter. Now, if you had been _my_ son,
and yonder tight craft _my_ ship, I would have said, 'Come at once.' But
your father knows best, lad; and you're a wise son to obey orders
cheerfully, without question. That's another o' my maxims, 'Obey orders,
an' ax no questions.'"

Frederick Ellice, senior, who now approached, whispering words of
consolation into the ear of his weeping sister, might, perhaps, have
just numbered fifty years. He was a fine, big, bold, hearty Englishman,
with a bald head, grizzled locks, a loud but not harsh voice, a rather
quick temper, and a kind, earnest, enthusiastic heart. Like Buzzby, he
had spent nearly all his life at sea, and had become so thoroughly
accustomed to walking on an unstable foundation that he felt quite
uncomfortable on solid ground, and never remained more than a few months
at a time on shore. He was a man of good education and gentlemanly
manners, and had worked his way up in the merchant service step by step
until he obtained the command of a West India trader.

A few years previous to the period in which our tale opens, an event
occurred which altered the course of Captain Ellice's life, and for a
long period plunged him into the deepest affliction. This was the loss
of his wife at sea under peculiarly distressing circumstances.

At the age of thirty Captain Ellice had married a pretty blue-eyed girl,
who resolutely refused to become a sailor's bride unless she should be
permitted to accompany her husband to sea. This was without much
difficulty agreed to, and forthwith Alice Bremner became Mrs. Ellice,
and went to sea. It was during her third voyage to the West Indies that
our hero Fred was born, and it was during this and succeeding voyages
that Buzzby became "all but a wet-nurse" to him.

Mrs. Ellice was a loving, gentle, seriously-minded woman. She devoted
herself, heart and soul to the training of her boy, and spent many a
pleasant hour in that little, unsteady cabin in endeavouring to instil
into his infant mind the blessed truths of Christianity, and in making
the name of Jesus familiar to his ear. As Fred grew older his mother
encouraged him to hold occasional intercourse with the sailors