of emotions--a
struggle between filial affection and selfish desire. Thus wavering, a
word would decide him to turn back for Godalming and home. But there is
no one to speak that word, while the next wave of thought surging upward
brings vividly before him the sea with all its wonders--a vision too
bright, too fascinating, to be resisted by a boy, especially one brought
up on a farm. So he no longer hesitates, but, picking up his bundle,
strides on toward Portsmouth.

A few hundred paces farther up, and he is on the summit of the ridge,
there to behold the belt of low-lying Hampshire coastland, and beyond it
the sea itself, like a sheet of blue glass, spreading out till met by
the lighter blue of the sky. It is his first look upon the ocean, but
not the last; it can surely now claim him for its own.

Soon after an incident occurs to strengthen him in the resolve he has
taken. At the southern base of the "Downs," lying alongside the road,
is the park and mansion of Horndean. Passing its lodge-gate, he has the
curiosity to ask who is the owner of such a grand place, and gets for
answer, "Admiral Sir Charles Napier." [See Note 1.]

"Might not _I_ some day be an admiral?" self-interrogates Henry Chester,
the thought sending lightness to his heart and quickening his steps in
the direction of Portsmouth.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1. The Sir Charles Napier known to history as the "hero of Saint
Jean d'Acre," but better known to sailors in the British navy as "Old
Sharpen Your Cutlasses!" This quaint soubriquet he obtained from an
order issued by him when he commanded a fleet in the Baltic,
anticipating an engagement with the Russians.

CHAPTER TWO.

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.

The clocks of Portsmouth are striking nine as the yeoman-farmer's son
enters the suburbs of the famous seaport. He lingers not there, but
presses on to where he may find the ships--"by the Hard, Portsea," as he
learns on inquiry. Presently a long street opens before him, at whose
farther end he descries a forest of masts, with their network of spars
and rigging, like the web of a gigantic spider. Ship he has never seen
before, save in pictures or miniature models; but either were enough for
their identification, and the youth knows he is now looking with waking
eyes at what has so often appeared to him in dreams.

Hastening on, he sees scores of vessels lying at anchor off the