ded five feet eight inches,--but
broad-shouldered, deep-chested, strong-limbed, and so compact of bone
and muscle, that in a ship of the line, in which he afterwards sailed,
there was not, among five hundred able-bodied seamen, a man who could
lift so great a weight, or grapple with him on equal terms. His
education had been but indifferently cared for at home: he had, however,
been taught to read by a female cousin, a niece of his mother's, who,
like her too, was both the daughter and the widow of a sailor; and for
his cousin's only child, a girl somewhat younger than himself, he had
contracted a boyish affection, which in a stronger form continued to
retain possession of him after he grew up. In the leisure thrown on
his-hands in long Indian and Chinese voyages, he learned to write; and
profited so much by the instructions of a comrade, an intelligent and
warm-hearted though reckless Irishman, that he became skilful enough to
keep a log-book, and to take a reckoning with the necessary
correctness,--accomplishments far from common at the time among ordinary
sailors. He formed, too, a taste for reading. The recollection of his
cousin's daughter may have influenced him, but he commenced life with a
determination to rise in it,--made his first money by storing up instead
of drinking his grog,--and, as was common in those times, drove a little
trade with the natives of foreign parts in articles of curiosity and
vertu, for which, I suspect, the custom-house dues were not always paid.
With all his Scotch prudence, however, and with much kindliness of
heart and placidity of temper there was some wild blood in his veins,
derived, mayhap, from one or two buccaneering ancestors, that, when
excited beyond the endurance point, became sufficiently formidable; and
which, on at least one occasion, interfered very considerably with his
plans and prospects.

On a protracted and tedious voyage in a large East Indiaman, he had,
with the rest of the crew, been subjected to harsh usage by a stern,
capricious captain; but, secure of relief on reaching port, he had borne
uncomplainingly with it all. His comrade and quondam teacher, the
Irishman, was, however, less patient; and for remonstrating with the
tyrant, as one of a deputation of the seamen, in what was deemed a
mutinous spirit, he was laid hold of, and was in the course of being
ironed down to the deck under a tropical sun, when his quieter comrade,
with his blood now heated to the b