lage of Barton in Norfolk, at the time the
guns at Balaclava were mowing down our red coats and tars, where my
father had a small house facing the Broad. It was a comfortable old
two-storied building, with a thatched roof, through which a couple of
dormer windows peered out, like two eyes, over the beautiful green lawn
which sloped to the reed-fringed water. My father was in very
comfortable circumstances, as he was owner of six large fishing vessels
hailing from the port of Great Yarmouth, some ten or twelve miles
distant as the crow flies.

[Illustration: THE OLD HOME AT BARTON.]

Being born, as it were, on the water (for a distance of a hundred yards
matters but little), I was naturally from my birth a young water dog,
although they tell me that for some months after I made my bow to the
world, milk also played a prominent part in my career.

As I grew into boyhood, of course I had my rowing punt and my rod, and
thus gained my first taste for a solitary life, as it frequently
happened that I would be away from sunrise to sunset on some little
expedition to one or other of the neighbouring Broads. By and bye came
the time when I arrived at that rare age for enjoyment, fourteen years.
This birthday, the fourteenth, was a red-letter day in my life, as I
received two presents, which were in my eyes very valuable ones; my
uncle presented me with a beautiful little light gun, and my father
handed me over his small sailing boat. Now I was a man! I felt it, and I
knew it, and so did my schoolmates, for there was not one of them, who
at some time or other, had not felt the effects of my prowess in a
striking manner. Still, the drubbings I gave were not always to my
credit, for I was a very big and strong lad for my age, and my
self-imposed tasks of long rowing trips and other athletic exercises,
naturally made me powerful in the arms and chest. Of my brain power I
shall say little, as my mind was ever bent on sporting topics when it
should have been diving into English history or vulgar fractions. Some
new device in fishing gear was always of more consequence to me than any
inquiry as to the name of the executioner who gave Charles the I. "chops
for breakfast," as we youngsters used to say, when we irreverently spoke
of the decollation of his Majesty.

Still, somehow I stumbled through my schooling till I was sixteen, when
I was sent off to my father's office on the Quay at Yarmouth to take
charge of the books, which were