e, and
they were dirtier than he had supposed. But he did not lose heart, and
remembering, from the cowherd's tales, that people who cannot pay for
their passage must either work it out or hide themselves on board ship,
he took the easier alternative, and got on to the first vessel which had
a plank to the quay, and hid himself under some tarpaulin on the deck.

The vessel was a collier bound for London, and she sailed with the
morning tide.

When he was found out he was not ill-treated. Indeed, the rough skipper
offered to take him home again on his return voyage. He would have liked
to go, but pride withheld him, and homesickness had not yet eaten into
his very soul. Then an old sailor with one eye (but that a sly one) met
him, and told him tales more wonderful than the cowherd's. And with him
he shipped as cabin-boy, on a vessel bound for the other side of the
world.

* * * * *

A great many sins bring their own punishment in this life pretty
clearly, and sometimes pretty closely; but few more directly or more
bitterly than rebellion against the duties, and ingratitude for the
blessings, of home.

There was no playing truant on board ship; and as to the master poor
John Broom served now, his cruelty made the memory of the farm-bailiff a
memory of tenderness and gentleness and indulgence. Till he was
half-naked and half-starved, and had only short snatches of sleep in
hard corners, it had never struck him that when one has got good food
and clothes, and sound sleep in a kindly home, he has got more than
many people, and enough to be thankful for.

He did everything he was told now as fast as he could do it, in fear for
his life. The one-eyed sailor had told him that the captain always took
orphans and poor friendless lads to be his cabin-boys, and John Broom
thought what a nice kind man he must be, and how different from the
farm-bailiff, who thought nobody could be trustworthy unless he could
show parents and grand-parents, and cousins to the sixth degree. But
after they had sailed, when John Broom felt very ill, and asked the
one-eyed sailor where he was to sleep, the one-eyed sailor pleasantly
replied that if he hadn't brought a four-post bed in his pocket he must
sleep where he could, for that all the other cabin-boys were sleeping in
Davy's Locker, and couldn't be disturbed. And it was not till John Broom
had learned ship's language that he found out that Davy's Locker meant