e soft air of her native Devonshire, and she
entreated that he would rather take her with him to sea than leave her
there. Fortunately, as he considered it, the owners of the brig he had
served in offered him the command of another of their vessels, and he
was able to fulfil the wishes of his wife, as well as to please his own
inclination, though for her sake he would rather have left her in safety
on shore, for he too well knew all the dangers and hardships of the sea
to desire to expose her to them.

My father had very few surviving relatives. His mother and sister were
the only two of whom I know. His father and two brothers had been lost
in the Greenland fishery, and several of his uncles and cousins had been
scattered about in different parts of the world, never to return to
their native islands. When, therefore, he found that Shetland would not
suit my mother's health, he tried to persuade my grandmother and Aunt
Bretta to accompany him to Devonshire. After many doubts and misgivings
as to how they could possibly live in that warm country far away to the
south among a strange people, who could not understand a word of Erse,
they at length, for love of him and his young wife, agreed to do as he
wished. As soon as he was able he fetched them from Shetland to Hull,
whence he conveyed them to Plymouth in his own vessel, and left them
very comfortably settled in a little house of their own in the outskirts
of the town. Though small, it was neat and pleasant, and they soon got
accustomed to the change, though they complained at first that the days
in summer were very short compared to those in their own country. This
was the year before I was born. My mother, though she had now a home
where she could have remained, was so reconciled to a sea life, and so
fond, I may say, of my father, that she preferred living on board his
vessel to the enjoyment of all the comforts of the shore. On one
memorable occasion, a new brig he commanded, called the _Jannet
Trevelyn_, in compliment to my mother, was bound round from Hull to Cork
harbour in Ireland, and was to have put into Plymouth to land her,
seeing that she was not in a fit state to continue the voyage, when a
heavy south-westerly gale came on, and the brig was driven up channel
again off the Isle of Wight. During its continuance, while the brig was
pitching, bows under, with close-reefed topsails only on her, with a
heavy sea running, the sky as black as pitch, th