ve some of the roast beef of old England before you set
out to sea."

Nothing loath, now that his promise was kept, Nelson went with the
lieutenant into one of the small, winding Chatham streets, and entered
an inn much frequented by sailors. Here the officer ordered a hot
supper, and sat by the boy while the latter ate it. Nelson was nearly
famished; it was a delight to the lieutenant to watch the satisfying of
such an appetite.

A little later the officer and the boy were rowed out to the frigate,
and Nelson duly delivered by his new friend into the care of the ship's
commander. His uncle looked at the boy askance; he seemed very pale and
delicate and undersized, even for a boy of thirteen, but the uncle had
promised to take him on trial as midshipman, and so, though with much
misgiving, he found him his berth.

He little knew what the sight of that Channel Fleet and the smell of the
salt water meant to the new midshipman.

The boy's uncle, Captain Suckling by name, who was in command of this
sixty-four gun man-o'-war, had been trained in the principles of the
old English navy, which were that hardship was good for a sailor, and
that the more a man was battered about in time of peace the better he
would fight in time of war.

Everything above decks was spick and span, and young Horatio gazed with
wondering admiration at the neatness of the white decks continually
scraped and holystoned until they fairly glistened in the sun, at the
imposing size and length of the long lines of black cannon, the special
pride of every officer, and at the symmetry and the wonderful height of
spars and sails and rigging, forming a very network in the sky.

He had loved boats since the days when he had pumped water into the
horse-trough before his father's house in order that he might sail paper
boats in it, and now it seemed almost impossible to believe that he
stood on the deck of a ship of his Majesty's service and was to have a
hand in caring for all this cannon and rigging. He looked wonderingly at
the sailors, a bronzed, hardy lot, in their white jackets and trousers
that flared widely at the bottom, wearing their hair according to the
custom of the day in long pig-tails down their backs.

But when he went below decks he found the picture very different.
Everything there was dirt and gloom, foul odors and general misery. The
cat-o'-nine-tails was the favorite punishment for sailors. Many a back
was deeply scored with the las