d mathematics, including
geometry, algebra, and trigonometry. I was allowed to continue at
school until my fourteenth birthday, when, in consequence of my strong
predilection for the sea as a profession, I was apprenticed by Uncle
Jack to Mr White for a period of seven years. The first year of my
apprenticeship was spent aboard a collier, trading between the Tyne and
Weymouth; then I was transferred for three years to a Levant trader; and
finally I was promoted--as I considered it--into the _Weymouth_, West
Indiaman, which brings me back to the point from whence this bit of
explanation started.

The modest cottage which I called home was situated in the picturesque
little village of Wyke; I had therefore a walk of some two miles before
me when I left Mr White's office; and as I sped along the road I
beguiled the way by building the most magnificent of castles in the air.
After the brief peace of Amiens, war had again broken out in May of the
preceding year; and everybody was of opinion that the struggle which
then commenced was destined to be of quite exceptional duration and
severity. Then, again, it was well-known that Spain was only waiting
for a sufficiently plausible pretext to declare war against us; and that
pretext, it was believed, would be found in the capture by a British
squadron of the three Spanish treasure-ships _Medea_, _Clara_, and
_Fama_, news of which had just reached England. All this was of course
simply disastrous from a commercial point of view; but for navy men and
privateersmen it opened up a long vista of opportunities to win both
distinction and fortune; for it gave us the marine commerce of three
rich and powerful nations--France, Holland, and Spain--as a lawful prey.
Fortunes of almost fabulous magnitude had been made by lucky
privateersmen during the last war; and was there not even then living in
Weymouth the heroic Captain Tizard, who had captured a Spanish Plate
ship and sailed into Plymouth Sound with his prize in tow, and a massive
gold candlestick glittering at each mast-head? And if others had done
such things, why not we? I knew Captain Winter for a man who not only
had every detail of his profession at his fingers' ends, but who also
combined the highest courage with the nicest discretion and a subtlety
of resource that had already served us in good stead on more than one
occasion. Then there was Robert Lovell, our chief mate, late of the
_Weymouth_. He, like the captain, w