ve spent our best years
on the sea. I have it myself--a sort of feeling that we want to
be under another kind of Providence, when we look out and see a
hill on this side and a hill on that. It's wonderful to see the
trees come out and the corn grow, but then it doesn't come so
home to an old sailor. I know that we're all just as much under
the Lord's hand on shore as at sea; but you can't read in a book
you haven't been used to, and they that go down to the sea in
ships, they see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the
deep. It isn't their fault if they don't see his wonders on the
land so easily as other people.

But, for all that, there's no man enjoys a cruise in the country
more than a sailor. It's forty years ago since I started for
Plymouth, but I haven't forgotten the road a bit or how beautiful
it was; all through the New Forest, and over Salisbury Plain, and
then by the mail to Exeter, and through Devonshire. It took me
three days to get to Plymouth, for we didn't get about so quick
in those days.

The Commodore was very kind to me when I got there, and I went
about with him to the ships in the bay, and through the
dock-yard, and picked up a good deal that was of use to me
afterwards. I was a lieutenant in those days, and had seen a good
deal of service, and I found the old Commodore had a great nephew
whom he had adopted, and had set his whole heart upon. He was an
old bachelor himself, but the boy had come to live with him, and
was to go to sea; so he wanted to put him under some one who
would give an eye to him for the first year or two. He was a
light slip of a boy then, fourteen years old, with deep set blue
eyes and long eyelashes, and cheeks like a girl's, but brave as a
lion and as merry as a lark. The old gentleman was very pleased
to see that we took to one another. We used to bathe and boat
together; and he was never tired of hearing my stories about the
great admirals, and the fleet, and the stations I had been on.

Well, it was agreed that I should apply for a ship again
directly, and go up to London with a letter to the Admiralty from
the Commodore, to help things on. After a month or two I was
appointed to a brig, lying at Spithead; and so I wrote off to the
Commodore and he got his boy a midshipman's berth on board, and
brought him to Portsmouth himself a day or two before we sailed
for the Mediterranean. The old gentleman came on board to see the
boy's hammock slung, and went below i