captain and manager
in the China trade at nineteen, and at twenty-nine left the quarter-deck
with a competence to establish his firm, which at one time controlled half
the trade between the United States and China. A score of such successes
might be recounted.

But the fee which these Yankee boys paid for introduction into their
calling was a heavy one. Dana's description of life in the forecastle,
written in 1840, holds good for the conditions prevailing for forty years
before and forty after he penned it. The greeting which his captain gave
to the crew of the brig "Pilgrim" was repeated, with little variation, on
a thousand quarter-decks:

"Now, my men, we have begun a long voyage. If we get along well together
we shall have a comfortable time; if we don't, we shall hay hell afloat.
All you have to do is to obey your orders and do your duty like men--then
you will fare well enough; if you don't, you will fare hard enough, I can
tell you. If we pull together you will find me a clever fellow; if we
don't, you will find me a bloody rascal. That's all I've got to say. Go
below the larboard watch."

But the note of roughness and blackguardism was not always sounded on
American ships. We find, in looking over old memoirs, that more than one
vessel was known as a "religious ship"--though, indeed, the very fact that
few were thus noted speaks volumes for the paganism of the mass. But the
shipowners of Puritan New England not infrequently laid stress on the
moral character of the men shipped. Nathaniel Ames, a Harvard graduate who
shipped before the mast, records that on his first vessel men seeking
berths even in the forecastle were ordered to bring certificates of good
character from the clergyman whose church they had last attended. Beyond
doubt, however, this was a most unusual requirement. More often the
majority of the crew were rough, illiterate fellows, often enticed into
shipping while under the influence of liquor, and almost always coming
aboard at the last moment, much the worse for long debauches. The men of a
better sort who occasionally found themselves unluckily shipped with such
a crew, have left on record many curious stories of the way in which
sailors, utterly unable to walk on shore or on deck for intoxication,
would, at the word of command, spring into the rigging, clamber up the
shrouds, shake out reefs, and perform the most difficult duties aloft.

[Illustration: THE BUG-EYE]

Most of the things w