nd so on. So it was, I brought the old
'Amphion' safe into dock, and was passed off to wander about the world,
with something under forty pounds in my pocket, and a 'good-service
letter' from the Admiralty--a document that costs a man some trouble
to gain, but that would not get you a third-class place in the rail to
Croydon, when you have it. What was I to do?--I had no interest for the
Coast-Guard. I tried to become keeper of a lighthouse, but failed. It
was no use to try and be a clerk--there were plenty of fellows, better
qualified than myself, walking the streets supperless. So I set myself a
thinking if I could n't do something for 'the service' that might get
me into notice, and make the 'Lords' take me up. There was one chap made
his fortune by 'round sterns,' though they were known in the Dutch Navy
for two centuries. There was another invented a life-boat; a third, a
new floating buoy--and so on. Now I 'm sure I passed many a sleepless
night thinking of something that might aid me; at one time it was a
new mode of reefing topsails in a gale; at another it was a change in
signalizing the distant ships of a squadron; now an anchor for rocky
bottoms; now a contrivance for lowering quarter-boats in a heavy
sea--till at last, by dint of downright thought and perseverance, I did
fall upon a lucky notion. I invented a new hand-pump, applicable
for launches and gun-boats,--a thing greatly wanted, very simple of
contrivance, and easy to work. It was a blessed moment, to be sure, when
my mind, instead of wandering over everything from the round top to the
taffrail, at last settled down on this same pump!

"It was not mere labor and study this invention caused me. No! it
swallowed up nearly every shilling of my little hoard. I was obliged to
make a model, and what with lead and zinc, and solder and leather, and
caoutchouc and copper, I was very soon left without 'tin;' but I had
hope, and hope makes up for half rations! At last, my pump was perfect;
the next thing was to make it known. There was no use in trying this
through any unprofessional channels. Landsmen think that as they pay for
the navy, they need not bother their heads about it further. 'My lords,'
I knew well, would n't mind me, because my father was n't in Parliament,
and so I thought of one of those magazines that devote themselves to
the interests of the two services, and I wrote a paper accordingly,
and accompanied it by a kind of diagram of my pump. I wa