the Scilly Isles; and once, a most memorable voyage, we made a round
trip in the little craft to the Bristol Channel and back--facing all the
perils of the "twenty-two fathom sandbank" off Cape Cornwall, with its
heavy tumbling sea.

This was not time wasted on my part; for I had not forgotten my ambition
of being a sailor, and now, under Sam Pengelly's able tuition I was
thoroughly initiated into all the practical details of seamanship,
albeit I had not yet essayed life on board ship in an ocean-going
vessel.

Sam Pengelly said, that, at fourteen, I was too young to be apprenticed
regularly to the sea, and that it would be much better for me to wait
until I should be able to be of use in a ship, and get on more quickly
in navigation. Going to sea before would only be lost time, for I could
gain quite as much experience of what it was necessary for me to know in
the schooner along with him, until it was time for me to go afloat in
real earnest.

This was what my old friend advised; and, although he declared himself
willing to forward my wishes should they go counter to his own views, I
valued his opinion too highly to disagree with it, judging that his
forty years' experience of the sea must have taught him enough to know
better than I about what was best in the matter.

My life, therefore, for the two intervening years, after I had run away
from school and before I went actually to sea, was a very even and
pleasant one--cut off completely, as it was, from all the painful past,
and the associations of Aunt Matilda and Dr Hellyer's. I had heard once
from Tom, my whilom chum, it is true, telling me that his mother had
persuaded him to go back to the Doctor's establishment, and that I
should not have any further communication from him in consequence--which
I didn't; and there was the one letter from Uncle George to Sam
Pengelly, "washing his hands of me," which I have already alluded to.
With these, however, all connection with my former existence ceased; and
I can't say I regretted it, cherished as I now was in the great loving
Cornish hearts of Sam and Jane Pengelly.

Sam would not let my education be neglected, however.

"No, no, laddie, we must keep a clear look-out on that," he often said
to me. "If I had only had eddication when I was in the sarvice, I'd ha'
been a warrant officer with a long pension now, instead o' having a
short one, and bein' 'bliged to trust to my own hands to lengthen it
out. If you w