t
be glad to have a repetition of the offer.

To this letter a reply soon came, announcing the immediate departure of
the ship, and containing a specific offer to receive Bob on board in the
capacity of apprentice on her next voyage.

The idea of taking to the sea as a profession was so thoroughly novel to
Bob that he had at first some little difficulty in realising all that it
meant. Hitherto he had had no other intention or ambition than to
potter about in a fishing smack with old Bill, living a hard life,
earning a precarious subsistence, and possibly, if exceptionally
fortunate, at some period in the far-distant future, attaining to the
ownership of a smack himself. But a month or two later on, when all had
been saved that it was possible to save from the wreck, and when nothing
remained of the once fine ship but a few shattered timbers embedded in
the sand, and showing at low water like the fragment of a skeleton of
some leviathan; when Bob found time to fully discuss the matter with old
Bill Maskell and his mates, these worthies painted the advantages of a
regular seaman's life over those of the mere fisherman in such glowing
colours, and dwelt so enthusiastically upon the prospects which would
surely open out before our hero under the patronage of a man like
Captain Staunton, that Bob soon made up his mind to accept the captain's
offer and join him on his return to England.

Having once come to this decision the lad was all impatience for the
time to arrive when he might embark upon his career. As it is with most
lads, so it was with him, the prospect of a complete change in his mode
of life was full of pleasurable excitement; and perhaps it was only
natural that, now he had decided to forsake it, the monotonous humdrum
fisher's life became almost unbearably irksome to him. Old Bill Maskell
was not slow to observe this, and with the unselfishness which was so
eminently characteristic of him, though he loved the lad as his own
soul, he decided to shorten for him as far as possible the weary time of
waiting, and send him away at once.

Accordingly, on the first opportunity that presented itself, he remarked
to Bob--

"I say, boy, I've been turnin' matters over in my mind a bit, and it
seems to me as a v'yage or two in a coaster 'd do you a power o' good
afore you ships aboard a `South-Spainer.' You're as handy a lad as a
man need wish to be shipmates with, aboard a fore-and-aft-rigged craft;
but you ough