st the age of admission, and in other respects I was
well qualified. This expedient to palliate my folly was thought of--but
not by me. I must admit that in that respect my negative was accepted
at once. That order of feeling was comprehensible enough to the most
inimical of my critics. I was not called upon to offer explanations; the
truth is that what I had in view was not a naval career, but the sea.
There seemed no way open to it but through France. I had the language
at any rate, and of all the countries in Europe it is with France that
Poland has most connection. There were some facilities for having me a
little looked after, at first. Letters were being written, answers
were being received, arrangements were being made for my departure
for Marseilles, where an excellent fellow called Solary, got at in
a roundabout fashion through various French channels, had promised
good-naturedly to put le jeune homme in the way of getting a decent ship
for his first start if he really wanted a taste of ce metier de chien.

I watched all these preparations gratefully, and kept my own counsel.
But what I told the last of my examiners was perfectly true. Already
the determined resolve, that "if a seaman, then an English seaman," was
formulated in my head though, of course, in the Polish language. I did
not know six words of English, and I was astute enough to understand
that it was much better to say nothing of my purpose. As it was I was
already looked upon as partly insane, at least by the more distant
acquaintances. The principal thing was to get away. I put my trust in
the good-natured Solary's very civil letter to my uncle, though I was
shocked a little by the phrase about the metier de chien.

This Solary (Baptistin), when I beheld him in the flesh, turned out a
quite young man, very good-looking, with a fine black, short beard,
a fresh complexion, and soft, merry black eyes. He was as jovial and
good-natured as any boy could desire. I was still asleep in my room in
a modest hotel near the quays of the old port, after the fatigues of
the journey via Vienna, Zurich, Lyons, when he burst in flinging the
shutters open to the sun of Provence and chiding me boisterously for
lying abed. How pleasantly he startled me by his noisy objurgations to
be up and off instantly for a "three years' campaign in the South Seas."
O magic words! "Une campagne de trois ans dans les mers du sud"--that is
the French for a three years' deep-water v