xpedition of
very great importance. True, Mr Marshall, the owner of the
_Bonaventure_, had expressed some doubt as to George being old enough
for the responsibility of command, but he did not know the lad so well
as old Si Radlett did, and had not followed his career with the same
interest; and no sooner was the _Nonsuch_ clear of the channel--which
event occurred on the day following that of her departure from
Plymouth--than the young commander began to justify the confidence which
his new owner had reposed in him.

For, undoubtedly, George Saint Leger was a born seaman. Not only did he
ardently love the sea and everything connected with it, but he early
developed a faculty of understanding ships, their tackling, and how to
handle them. Knowledge that some men acquired only slowly and with
difficulty he seemed to grasp intuitively. The mysteries of navigation
soon ceased to be mysterious to him, and seven years of active sea
experience had taught him all that there was to learn in the way of
handling a crew and training it to work together in such a manner that
its efforts might be employed to the best advantage. Therefore, once
fairly at sea, he began to sedulously exercise his crew, first in the
work of reducing and making sail, until he had brought them to a pitch
of unsurpassable perfection in that particular direction. Then he as
sedulously drilled them in tacking, veering, and other manoeuvres.
Finally, he exercised them at the guns, putting them through all the
actions of loading, aiming, firing, and sponging out their weapons--but
without much expenditure of his precious ammunition--until there was
probably no smarter or capable crew afloat than that of the _Nonsuch_.
It must not be supposed that all this was accomplished without
developing a certain amount of friction. The ship had not been it sea a
full week before her young commander discovered that, despite all his
care, he had picked up a few grumblers and shirkers who failed to see
the necessity for so much strenuous training, but it was just here that
his own personal gifts came to the front. By dint of argument,
raillery, and--in one or two particularly bad and obdurate cases--
judicious chastisement he finally succeeded in, what is termed in modern
parlance, "licking them into shape."

The usual course to the West Indies in those days was by way of the
Azores and the Cape Verdes, at one or both of which places ships were
wont to renew their s