hout hesitation or mistake,
showing there, for the first time, some of that faculty to absorb and
make my own the imaged topography of a chart, which in later years was to
help me in regions of intricate navigation to keep the ships entrusted to
me off the ground. The place I was bound to was not easy to find. It
was one of those courts hidden away from the charted and navigable
streets, lost among the thick growth of houses like a dark pool in the
depths of a forest, approached by an inconspicuous archway as if by
secret path; a Dickensian nook of London, that wonder city, the growth of
which bears no sign of intelligent design, but many traces of freakishly
sombre phantasy the Great Master knew so well how to bring out by the
magic of his understanding love. And the office I entered was Dickensian
too. The dust of the Waterloo year lay on the panes and frames of its
windows; early Georgian grime clung to its sombre wainscoting.

It was one o'clock in the afternoon, but the day was gloomy. By the
light of a single gas-jet depending from the smoked ceiling I saw an
elderly man, in a long coat of black broadcloth. He had a grey beard, a
big nose, thick lips, and heavy shoulders. His curly white hair and the
general character of his head recalled vaguely a burly apostle in the
_barocco_ style of Italian art. Standing up at a tall, shabby, slanting
desk, his silver-rimmed spectacles pushed up high on his forehead, he was
eating a mutton-chop, which had been just brought to him from some
Dickensian eating-house round the corner.

Without ceasing to eat he turned to me his florid, _barocco_ apostle's
face with an expression of inquiry.

I produced elaborately a series of vocal sounds which must have borne
sufficient resemblance to the phonetics of English speech, for his face
broke into a smile of comprehension almost at once.--"Oh, it's you who
wrote a letter to me the other day from Lowestoft about getting a ship."

I had written to him from Lowestoft. I can't remember a single word of
that letter now. It was my very first composition in the English
language. And he had understood it, evidently, for he spoke to the point
at once, explaining that his business, mainly, was to find good ships for
young gentlemen who wanted to go to sea as premium apprentices with a
view of being trained for officers. But he gathered that this was not my
object. I did not desire to be apprenticed. Was that the case?

It was.