had been paid him.

My early days were not remarkable, I got through the complaints incident
to childhood in a manner satisfactory to my mother and the doctor, while
my elder brothers and sisters took very good care that I should not be
spoilt by over-indulgence. My brothers, as they advanced towards
manhood, were sent into various professions, and as none of them had
chosen the sea, it was decided, without my opinion being asked, that I
should be made an offering to Neptune.

That I might be prepared for my future calling, I was sent to reside
with my brother-in-law Jack Hayfield, in the neighbourhood of Bideford,
North Devon, to allow me the vast benefit of attending the school of
worthy Jeremiah Sinclair, kept over the marketplace in that far-famed
maritime town. I still love the recollection of the old place, with its
steep streets, its broad quays, and its bridge of many arches; to my
mind a more picturesque bridge does not exist in all the world, nor,
when the tide is in, a prettier river. On the bosom of that river I
gained my first practical experience of affairs nautical, and many a
trip I made down to Appledore with my schoolfellow Ned Treggellis, in a
boat which, had not a special providence watched over us, would speedily
have consigned us to the muddy bottom of the stream. An oar served us
as a rudder, another as a mast, with a piece of sacking as a sail spread
on a condemned boat-hook, while one of us was constantly employed in
baling out the water which came in through leaks unnumbered--a state of
affairs we had learned to consider normal to our craft.

From Sinclair's school, in order to receive the finishing-touches to my
education, I was removed to old Allen's well-known Mathematical Academy
in Cold Harbour.

It is just possible that I might have reaped some amount of benefit from
the mental provender served out in those nurseries of genius, but
unfortunately for me Jack's appreciation of the advantages of knowledge
was such that he considered the time squandered devoted to its
acquisition. Frequently, therefore, when I was supposed by my good
sister Mary, his wife, to be on my way to school, I had been waylaid by
him, and was employed with another boy in setting springles, marking
woodcocks, or in some other equally intellectual pastime. Whatever I
may now think about the matter, I was then convinced that Brother Jack
was one of the kindest and best fellows in the world; and when I fell
asle