in would come on board, and when I should begin
to learn to be a seaman, when I felt the no pleasing sensation of a
rope's end laid smartly across my shoulders. I turned quickly round to
resent the indignity, when I encountered the stern glance of the first
mate, Mr Stovin, fixed on me, while the "colt" in his hand showed that
he was the aggressor. "And so you are the youngster who wanted to make
himself useful, are you?" he exclaimed in a sneering voice.

"I am," I replied; "and I'll thank you in future not to take such
liberties with my back."

He burst into a loud laugh. "O my young cock-a-hoop, you show fight, do
you?" he exclaimed. "Well, we'll see what you are made of before long."

"I'm ready to do my duty when you show me the way," I answered in as
calm a voice as I could command; and I believe this reply, and the
having kept my temper, gave him a more favourable opinion of me than he
was before inclined to form, and somewhat softened his savage nature.

"A willing hand will have no want of masters," he observed. "And mind,
what I tell you to do you'll do as well as you can, and we shan't fall
foul of each other."

I will now describe the _Black Swan_. She measured nearly eight hundred
tons, was ship-rigged, and had been built many years. She carried
eighteen hands forward, with two cooks and a steward, besides the
captain, four mates, and a doctor.

There were about four hundred and forty steerage passengers, who, I may
explain, are the poorer classes; and I think there were ten cabin
passengers, who berthed in the cabin and messed with the captain. The
steerage passengers brought their own provisions, but the captain was
obliged to provide them with water and biscuit, just to keep life in
them; indeed, without it many of them would have died. It was, I felt,
like severing the last link which bound us to our native shores, when
the pilot left us at the mouth of the Mersey, and with a fair wind we
stood down the Irish Channel.

I cannot say that before I quitted home I had any very definite idea of
the life of a sailor; but I had some notion that his chief occupation
was sitting with his messmates round a can of grog, and singing songs
about his sweetheart: the reality I found was very different.

The first time I had any practical experience of this was when, the
pilot having left us, and the wind having veered round to the
north-east, the captain ordered the ship to be kept away before it. Hi