ible. You'll never get on without
that," he said, and producing an old, well-thumbed edition of Hamilton
Moore's "Epitome of Navigation," he added, "I'll give you this, Jack.
It has served me, and will serve you well if you master it as I've
done." How I did prize that book! I doubt if I ever valued anything
more in my life. My brother, I should have said, had been at an
excellent nautical school in Deal, established a few years before by
several officers of the Royal Navy, where he gained much credit by his
intelligence and attention to his studies. As soon as it was finally
settled that I was to go to sea I was sent to the same school on the day
my brother left home to go on his next voyage. I easily passed in, as I
knew all the simple rules of arithmetic thoroughly, and was pretty well
up in decimals. Having learned from my brother that the use of
logarithms and the first principles of geometry would soon be taught me
at school, with his help I had at once set to work on them, and after he
went away I continued my studies in the evenings when other boys were at
play, so that I quickly mastered all those necessary preliminaries. I
consequently got over them at school with a rapidity which astonished
the master, and with no little pride I heard the inspector, a naval
captain, remark, "First-rate boy--beats his brother--be a master in a
jiffy."

The result of my working so hard out of hours was that at our annual
examination I took the first prize, and was shortly afterwards
pronounced fit to be sent to sea. As I still held to my wish to go, my
father at once wrote to the owners of several first-class South Sea
whalers, who immediately agreed to send me as an apprentice on board one
of their ships, the "Eagle," Captain Hake, just about to sail for the
Pacific.

On the night before my departure I slept but little for thinking of the
novel and wonderful scenes I expected to go through, and I am pretty
sure that my kind mother did not close her eyes, but from a different
cause. She was thinking of parting from me, and of the dangers to which
I was to be exposed. She was praying that I might be preserved from
them I know, for she told me so. At three o'clock in the morning she
called me up, that I might be ready to start with my father by the mail
coach for Margate, whence we were to go up the river to London by
steamer. How earnestly did my pious father at family prayers, which he
never omitted, commend me t