t. But
my resolution did not stop here. I made up my mind to leave the country
altogether. After a day or two's lurking about the outward-bound vessels
in port, I found out which sailed first, and hid myself on board. Hunger
tried hard to force me out before the pilot had left; but hunger was not
new to me, and I kept my place. The pilot was out of the vessel when I
made my appearance on deck, and there was nothing for it but to keep me
or throw me overboard. The captain said (I have no doubt quite truly)
that he would have preferred throwing me overboard; but the majesty of
the law does sometimes stand the friend even of a vagabond like me. In
that way I came back to a sea-life. In that way I learned enough to
make me handy and useful (as I saw you noticed) on board Mr. Armadale's
yacht. I sailed more than one voyage, in more than one vessel, to more
than one part of the world, and I might have followed the sea for life,
if I could only have kept my temper under every provocation that could
be laid on it. I had learned a great deal; but, not having learned that,
I made the last part of my last voyage home to the port of Bristol in
irons; and I saw the inside of a prison for the first time in my life,
on a charge of mutinous conduct to one of my officers. You have heard me
with extraordinary patience, sir, and I am glad to tell you, in return,
that we are not far now from the end of my story. You found some books,
if I remember right, when you searched my luggage at the Somersetshire
inn?"

Mr. Brock answered in the affirmative.

"Those books mark the next change in my life--and the last, before I
took the usher's place at the school. My term of imprisonment was not
a long one. Perhaps my youth pleaded for me; perhaps the Bristol
magistrates took into consideration the time I had passed in irons on
board ship. Anyhow, I was just turned seventeen when I found myself out
on the world again. I had no friends to receive me; I had no place to go
to. A sailor's life, after what had happened, was a life I recoiled from
in disgust. I stood in the crowd on the bridge at Bristol, wondering
what I should do with my freedom now I had got it back. Whether I had
altered in the prison, or whether I was feeling the change in character
that comes with coming manhood, I don't know; but the old reckless
enjoyment of the old vagabond life seemed quite worn out of my nature.
An awful sense of loneliness kept me wandering about Bristol, in