n the ship, but two of them were my special
favourites. Jack Martin was a tall, strapping, broad-shouldered youth of
eighteen, with a handsome, good-humoured, firm face. He had had a good
education, was clever and hearty and lion-like in his actions, but mild
and quiet in disposition. Jack was a general favourite, and had a
peculiar fondness for me. My other companion was Peterkin Gay. He was
little, quick, funny, decidedly mischievous, and about fourteen years
old. But Peterkin's mischief was almost always harmless, else he could
not have been so much beloved as he was.

"Hallo! youngster," cried Jack Martin, giving me a slap on the shoulder,
the day I joined the ship, "come below and I'll show you your berth. You
and I are to be mess-mates, and I think we shall be good friends, for I
like the look o' you."

Jack was right. He and I and Peterkin afterwards became the best and
stanchest friends that ever tossed together on the stormy waves.

I shall say little about the first part of our voyage. We had the usual
amount of rough weather and calm; also we saw many strange fish rolling
in the sea, and I was greatly delighted one day by seeing a shoal of
flying fish dart out of the water and skim through the air about a foot
above the surface. They were pursued by dolphins, which feed on them,
and one flying-fish in its terror flew over the ship, struck on the
rigging, and fell upon the deck. Its wings were just fins elongated, and
we found that they could never fly far at a time, and never mounted into
the air like birds, but skimmed along the surface of the sea. Jack and I
had it for dinner, and found it remarkably good.

When we approached Cape Horn, at the southern extremity of America, the
weather became very cold and stormy, and the sailors began to tell
stories about the furious gales and the dangers of that terrible cape.

"Cape Horn," said one, "is the most horrible headland I ever doubled.
I've sailed round it twice already, and both times the ship was a'most
blow'd out o' the water."

"An' I've been round it once," said another, "an' that time the sails
were split, and the ropes frozen in the blocks, so that they wouldn't
work, and we wos all but lost."

"An' I've been round it five times," cried a third, "an' every time wos
wuss than another, the gales wos so tree-mendous!"

"And I've been round it no times at all," cried Peterkin, with an
impudent wink of his eye, "an' _that_ time I wos blow