red wilderness. No explorer could have been more lonely. I did
not know a single soul of all these millions that all around me peopled
the mysterious distances of the streets. I cannot say I was free from a
little youthful awe, but at that age one's feelings are simple. I was
elated. I was pursuing a clear aim, I was carrying out a deliberate plan
of making out of myself, in the first place, a seaman worthy of the
service, good enough to work by the side of the men with whom I was to
live; and in the second place, I had to justify my existence to myself,
to redeem a tacit moral pledge. Both these aims were to be attained by
the same effort. How simple seemed the problem of life then, on that
hazy day of early September in the year 1878, when I entered London for
the first time.

From that point of view--Youth and a straightforward scheme of conduct--it
was certainly a year of grace. All the help I had to get in touch with
the world I was invading was a piece of paper not much bigger than the
palm of my hand--in which I held it--torn out of a larger plan of London
for the greater facility of reference. It had been the object of careful
study for some days past. The fact that I could take a conveyance at the
station never occurred to my mind, no, not even when I got out into the
street, and stood, taking my anxious bearings, in the midst, so to speak,
of twenty thousand hansoms. A strange absence of mind or unconscious
conviction that one cannot approach an important moment of one's life by
means of a hired carriage? Yes, it would have been a preposterous
proceeding. And indeed I was to make an Australian voyage and encircle
the globe before ever entering a London hansom.

Another document, a cutting from a newspaper, containing the address of
an obscure shipping agent, was in my pocket. And I needed not to take it
out. That address was as if graven deep in my brain. I muttered its
words to myself as I walked on, navigating the sea of London by the chart
concealed in the palm of my hand; for I had vowed to myself not to
inquire my way from anyone. Youth is the time of rash pledges. Had I
taken a wrong turning I would have been lost; and if faithful to my
pledge I might have remained lost for days, for weeks, have left perhaps
my bones to be discovered bleaching in some blind alley of the
Whitechapel district, as it had happened to lonely travellers lost in the
bush. But I walked on to my destination wit