All I have attempted in this book is to endeavour to tell exactly my experiences as they occurred in my travels in many lands; also I have wished to reveal a little of the usual experiences, the ups and downs, that youths pass through when they go to sea and are left completely on their own in other lands, seeking to see the world, often ambitious to find a fortune, but generally succeeding in only gathering heaps of grim experiences. Unfortunately no one can buy his experience first, and so the general rule of green fortune-seekers overseas is to end in failure, and to be honest, I was no exception to the rule. Nevertheless my loss of all that might have been was amply compensated by the rough brave men whom I met, seafarers and otherwise, who revealed to me the best side of humanity and the value of good comradeship: devil-may-care fellows with hearts that were blazing hearth-fires of welcome in the coldest days of adversity of long ago, ere I, crammed up with experience and nothing much else, down in the stokehold of a tramp steamer, returned across the ocean to my native land, eventually to get the roving fever and again go seaward.
Pom-pe-te, pom-pe-te, pom, pom,
All thro’ the burning night
Shovelling coal for the engine’s heart
Down in the blinding light.
Working my passage, penniless,
Over the western main,—
And I know they’ll all be sorry
To see me home again.
Pom-pe-te, pom-pe-te, pom, pom,