l this schooling might be.

CHAPTER XI

HOW WE GREW, AND GROWING, GREW APART

As I said, I am not going to waste time telling you of my three long
voyages, beyond what is absolutely necessary. These lie for the most part
like level plains in my memory, though not without their out-jutting
points. But the heights and depths lay beyond.

Very clear to me, however, is the fact that it was ever-growing thought of
Carette, more even, I am bound to confess, than thought of my mother and
grandfather, that kept me clear of pitfalls which were not lacking to the
unwary in those days as in these. Thought of Carette, too, that braced me
to the quiet facing of odds on more than one occasion.

Our second voyage was distinguished by a whole day's fierce fighting with a
French privateer off the Caicos Islands, while proceeding peacefully on our
way from the newly acquired island of Trinidad to the St. Lawrence. It was
my first experience of fighting, and a hot one at that. Between killed and
wounded we lost five men, but the Frenchman left ten dead on our deck the
first time he boarded, and eight the second, and after that did not try
again. But he dogged us all the rest of that day and did his best to
cripple us, until a fortunate shot from a carronade, which Master Nicolle
ran out astern, nipped his foremast and set us free. I got a cut from a
cutlass in the left arm, but it healed readily, and Captain Nicolle was
pleased to compliment me on my behaviour. But, to tell the truth, I was so
angry at the Frenchman's insolent interference with us, that I thought of
nothing at the time but taking it out of him with hearty thrust and blow
whenever chance offered.

On our third voyage the _Hirondelle_ went ashore in a gale off Cape
Hatteras, and Captain Nicolle and half our crew were drowned. The rest of
us scrambled ashore _sans_ everything, but were well treated, and as soon
as we could travel were forwarded to New York, and in time found a ship to
take us to London.

So that, on the whole, I had seen a fair amount of life and death and the
larger world outside, and felt my years almost doubled from what they were
when I used to lie on Tintageu and watch the white-sailed ships pressing
out to the great beyond.

But the things that stand out now most clearly in my memory are the
homecomings and the partings and all they meant to me, but more especially
the homecomings--the eager looking forward from the moment our bows poin