ime under the title of First Command the reader may
guess that it is concerned with my personal experience. And as a matter
of fact it _is_ personal experience seen in perspective with the eye of
the mind and coloured by that affection one can't help feeling for such
events of one's life as one has no reason to be ashamed of. And that
affection is as intense (I appeal here to universal experience) as the
shame, and almost the anguish with which one remembers some unfortunate
occurrences, down to mere mistakes in speech, that have been perpetrated
by one in the past. The effect of perspective in memory is to make
things loom large because the essentials stand out isolated from their
surroundings of insignificant daily facts which have naturally faded out
of one's mind. I remember that period of my sea-life with pleasure
because begun inauspiciously it turned out in the end a success from a
personal point of view, leaving a tangible proof in the terms of the
letter the owners of the ship wrote to me two years afterwards when I
resigned my command in order to come home. This resignation marked the
beginning of another phase of my seaman's life, its terminal phase, if I
may say so, which in its own way has coloured another portion of my
writings. I didn't know then how near its end my sea-life was, and
therefore I felt no sorrow except at parting with the ship. I was sorry
also to break my connection with the firm which owned her and who were
pleased to receive with friendly kindness and give their confidence to a
man who had entered their service in an accidental manner and in very
adverse circumstances. Without disparaging the earnestness of my purpose
I suspect now that luck had no small part in the success of the trust
reposed in me. And one cannot help remembering with pleasure the time
when one's best efforts were seconded by a run of luck.

The words "_Worthy of my undying regard_" selected by me for the motto
on the title page are quoted from the text of the book itself; and,
though one of my critics surmised that they applied to the ship, it is
evident from the place where they stand that they refer to the men of
that ship's company: complete strangers to their new captain and yet who
stood by him so well during those twenty days that seemed to have been
passed on the brink of a slow and agonizing destruction. And _that_ is
the greatest memory of all! For surely it is a great thing to have
commanded a handful of men