Chapter One.

A Word about Myself and Home.

I was born, as near as I can calculate, in the year 1801, at the time of the Equinoctial gales, a fact which made the old fisherwives present at my birth declare that I was marked out by the finger of Providence for a sailor.

To confirm them, as it seemed, on this point, when the winds, with a whirling rush, used to shriek around my parent’s cottage, that clung, limpet like to the face of the rocks which sheltered the little Cornish fishing village, I, baby as I was, used to shriek in unison, not from fear or pain, but unmitigated delight at, and sympathy with, its rough, boisterous turmoil.

Certainly as I look back to my early days and what I have heard related of them, the Breton saying, which in my voyages I have come across, “Il a de l’eau de mer autour du coeur,” appeared most true in my case, for the rough shingly beach was my home in stormy weather or fine. (He has the sea water about his heart.)

During the former I would perch on some rocky crag and, only partly sheltered from the cutting, drifting rain, cling curlew-fashion to its rugged surface, and silently, but with infinite enjoyment, watch the mountain waves, with their white dancing crests flung into myriads of flashing particles by the wind, break with a roar like thunder on the beach beneath, adding their contribution of spray to the rain which drenched me to the skin.

When the weather was fine, especially if it were warm, I used to tumble, paddle, and roll in the clear pools left by the receding tide, like some amphibious little imp of creation, often getting within dangerous proximity to the fingers of death, and being saved by a miracle, till the inmates of the fishing hamlet had some reason for their reiterated remark that I assuredly was not born to be drowned. Assuredly not, nor to be burned, boiled, nor served up for the supper of some dark-skinned Indian chief and family neither, though in due course of my adventurous life I have often fancied myself on the point of one of these pleasant finales to existence.

It may naturally be thought that I was a constant source of anxiety to my parents, and no doubt so I should have been, had not, at about the time I had attained the second year of my life, a sudden squall caught my father’s fishing smack, and, capsizing it before he could luff, sent him and his two companions into eternity. The smack was found by some fishermen much damaged, quite empty, every vestige of tackle gone, its sails rent, and my father and the others nowhere. My mother took this so much to heart that she scarcely survived her husband’s death a week, and by joining him left me an orphan on my own hands. I say “my own,” though only two years old, for I had already displayed my wandering propensities by toddling and scrambling alone among the rocks; and, notwithstanding the few pounds my parents left would have procured me the protection of many an honest, good-hearted fisherwife, I scorned all such control, and resisted every effort to prevent my perambulations among the rocks and pools, where, not unfrequently when older, and on warm moonlight evenings, I used to spend even my nights; though, at other times, I condescended to accept the shelter offered me in Jack Brunscombe’s cottage, for whose little blue-eyed daughter I had early shown a marked liking, and would speedily have talked her into being the companion of my idle hours, but for the vigilance of her mother, who valued her darling’s tender little form far too highly to trust it with so wild, daring, idle a scapegrace as I.

Idleness, however, I soon proved they had no right to lay to my charge. Hardly had I acquired the great age of five, than the fishermen began to accept very willingly little Dick Galbraith’s services in hanging out their nets to dry, in swabbing the boats, or in any other minor capacity to which they found me ever ready to lend a hand, though a baby one.

It is a true saying that “let an energetic nature once get his foot on the world’s ladder, he will never lose it again.” So with me. The willing child was found the willing boy, which soon raised me to the dignity of going on fishing expeditions with the fishermen, who out of the great kindliness of heart to be found with these people, seemed each to adopt me—an orphan and a waif—for his own. The old men, some of whom had been sailors, were never tired of talking and telling yarns, while I—as if conscious of the future before me, and of what importance the information I was drinking in would hereafter be—was never tired of listening and asking questions.

So had years passed over my head, when, on my eighteenth birthday, as Jack Brunscombe with his family and I were seated in the little cabin-like parlour, after a long and thoughtful pause, I suddenly broke silence upon a subject which for months I had been turning over in my mind.

“Brunscombe,” I said, “you have frequently told me that there is a bit of money I can lay claim to, when old enough to know what to do with it.”

“Right Dick, my bo’,” replied the old man, removing his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other, having on its passage rubbed his bristly beard with the stem, “its what yer father’s fects realised arter his death bo’, with compund interest.”

“But, Brunscombe,” I interrupted, “I don’t consider that mine at all. Have I not lived here with you ever since? That money is fairly yours.”

“If yer mean mine, to pay for your board and lodgin’ bo’, yer had better take and chuck it to the rocks and pools, for them alone ’as pervided for yer.”

I laughed, but persisted, on which he rejoined.

“No, lad, the money’s yours. Never a penny will Jack Brunscombe touch. If when a little ’un yer were any expense, you’ve more than repaid it now you’ve growed up, for you’ve been a mort o’ help to me. But come bo’, let’s to the point. What made yer put that question about the bit o’ money to-night? You’d some reason—so all fair and above board—fire your broadside. I’m prepared. What is it?”

“Why, Brunscombe, I was thinking,” I began, “that if I really had a little money I would like to carry out a plan I have been turning about in my head.”

“And that?”

“Why, to go over to Liverpool or London, and enter the merchant service.”

“You find this here place then, too circumcised for your talents,” he rejoined, with a wink at Katie.

“I certainly think it too circumscribed for a young man beginning life,” I replied. “You, yourself, Brunscombe, did not pass all your existence here, though your native place as mine.”

“Quite right, bo’, quite; and joking apart, I think what you propose is the correct thing to do. So you may go into the town to-morrow, draw out the money, and then up to Liverpool. First of all, my old woman will write yer a list of things necessary for your kit, and you’ve been your own master long enough to know how to lay out the twenty punds, for that’s about the sum it is, judiciously.”

Thus things were arranged