t shoved off from the shore,
bearing me, almost heart-broken, with all my belongings out to the
_Josephine_, which anchored at the mouth of the harbour with her blue
peter flying, her sails loosed, and every sign of departure.

"Cheer up, my sonny!" said Moggridge, my old friend the boatswain, as I
sat in the stern of the boat with my face buried in my hands, for I had
not the courage to look back at those I was leaving; "I thought you were
a reg'lar chip of the old block, and your father told you mind, sir, to
be a man."

These words put me on my mettle, so I picked up a bit and waved my
handkerchief to dad, whom I could see standing still gazing after me;
and, when the boat got alongside the vessel, I clambered up the side-
ladder instead of allowing myself to be hoisted in as before.

"That's your sort," said Moggridge, who followed me up closely, in order
that he might catch me should I tumble back. He also helped me into the
entry port and on to the deck of the _Josephine_, where I found Captain
Miles waiting to receive me.

"Ha, here you are at last, youngster!" he cried out in welcome. "I
thought you were never coming out, and that we would have to start
without you. Wind and tide, you know, wait for neither man or boy!
Hoist in his traps, boatswain," he added to Moggridge, "and be as sharp
as you can about it too, for the breeze is just beginning to come off
the land."

I may here mention a meteorological fact that Captain Miles subsequently
explained to me. He said that this regular alternation of the sea and
land breeze in warm latitudes, as in the tropics generally, when the
wind blows for so many hours in the day on and off-shore, is owing to
the different powers for the radiation and absorption of heat possessed
by land and water, so that when the day temperature is highest on the
land the alternating breezes will be stronger, and _vice versa_. During
the day, to illustrate this fact, the radiation of the sun's heat on the
land causes the air to expand and so rise from the surface, which,
creating a vacuum, the air from the sea rushes in to fill the void. At
night this process is reversed, for, while the surface of the soil will
frequently show in the West Indies during the daytime a temperature of a
hundred and twenty degrees and more under the meridian sun, the
thermometer will sink down in the evening to fifty or sixty degrees;
whereas, the sea, being a bad radiator and its temperature rarely