bumpings and thumpings, the blows and
the buffetings, I was destined to endure in the course of it. Yet, even
had I expected them, I feel very certain they would not have changed my
wishes. No, no. I was mightily mistaken with regard to the romance of
the thing, I own; but had I to begin life again, with all its dangers
and hardships, still I would choose the ocean for my home--the glorious
navy of England for my profession.

But now for my antecedents. I will not trouble the reader with many of
them. I was born at the family seat in the south of Ireland. My mother
died while I was very young, and my father, Colonel D'Arcy, who had seen
much service in the army and had been severely wounded, after a
lingering illness, followed her to the grave. During this time I was
committed to the charge of Larry Harrigan, the butler and family
factotum; and, in truth, I desired no better companion, for well did I
love the old man. He was a seaman every inch of him, from his cherished
pigtail to the end of the timber toe on which he had long stumped
through the world. He had been coxswain to my maternal grandfather, a
captain in the navy, who was killed in action. Larry had gone to sea
with him as a lad, and they had seldom been separated. A few minutes
before his commander, in the moment of victory, lost his life, Larry had
his leg shot away; and on being paid off, he repaired to where my
mother's family were residing. When my father married, he offered the
old seaman an asylum beneath his roof. He certainly did not eat the
bread of idleness there, for no one about the place was more generally
useful. There was nothing he could not do or make, and in spite of his
loss of a limb, he was as active as most people possessed with the usual
complement of supporters.

Larry had loved my mother as his own child, and for her sake he loved me
more than anything else on earth. As he considered it a part of his
duty to instruct me in his own accomplishments, which being chiefly of a
professional character, I at a very early age became thoroughly
initiated in the mysteries of knotting, bending, and splicing, and
similar nautical arts. I could point a rope, work a Turk's-head, or
turn in an eye, as well as many an A.B. Not content with this, he built
me a model of a ship, with her rigging complete. He then set to work to
teach me the names of every rope and spar; and when I knew them and
their uses, he unrigged the ship and mad