trust that my adventures
will explain what I mean. For my own part, I can say that oftentimes
have I enjoyed that intense pleasure, that joyous enthusiasm, that high
excitement, which not only recompenses one for the toil and hardships by
which it is won, but truly makes them as nothing in comparison to the
former. All I can say is, let me go through the world sharing the rough
and the smooth alike--the storms and sunshine of life; but save me from
the stagnant existence of the man who sleeps on a feather bed and always
keeps out of danger.

CHAPTER TWO.

DON THE TRUE BLUE--ROMANCE OF THE SEA--LARRY AND HIS WIFE.

My uniform was to be made at Portsmouth. Of course I felt myself not a
little important, and very fine, as I put it on for, the first time, and
looked at myself in the glass, with my dirk buckled to my side, and a
round hat with a cockade in it on my head. We were sitting in the
coffee-room, waiting for dinner, on that eventful day, when a number of
youngsters belonging to a line-of-battle ship came into the inn. They
had not been there long, when the shiny look of my new clothes, and the
way I kept handling my dirk, unable to help looking down at it,
attracted the attention of one of them.

"That's a sucking Nelson," he exclaimed, "I'll bet a sixpence!"

"Hillo, youngster! to what ship do you belong?" asked another, looking
hard at me.

"To the _Serpent_ cutter," I answered, not quite liking the tone in
which he spoke.

"And so you are a cutter's midshipman, are you?" he asked. "And how is
it you are not on board, I should like to know?"

I told him that the cutter was away, and that I was waiting for her
return.

"Then I presume that you haven't been to sea at all yet?" observed the
first who had spoken, in a bland tone, winking at his shipmates, with
the intention of trotting me out.

I answered simply that I had not. Larry, I must observe, all the time
was sitting silent, and pretending not to take any notice of them, so
that they did not suspect we belonged to each other.

"Poor boy, I pity you," observed the young gentleman, gravely, and
turning up his eyes. "I'd advise you seriously to go back to your
mamma. You've no idea of all the difficult things you'll have to learn;
of which, how to hand, reef, and steer isn't the hundredth part."

"In the first place, I have not a mamma to go to," I replied, in an
indignant tone; for I did not like his mentioning her, even. "And
perh