“So I worked and worked not only to please him, but because there was a prospect of my one day walking on the snowy quarter-deck of some beautiful barque, her proud commander.
“Every one on board loved our captain, although they called him the old man behind his back. From Australia we went to Hong Kong, then to Ceylon, from there to Calcutta, and then back again to Ceylon, and returned to India, lying up for repairs at the city of Bombay. And my kind captain never once went on shore without taking me with him, so that I saw so much that was strange in life, lad, that I could sit and talk in this cave for a month if my good friend here would bring us prog, and then I wouldn’t have half told you all my strange experiences.
“I had been now nearly two years at sea, and had passed one examination, so things were looking up.
“I dearly loved the sea and sea-life now. I would not have changed places with a land-lubber for all the world.
“We had many narrow escapes, of course, for our ship was a clipper, and the captain ‘cracked on.’ He did not mind risk so long as he made good voyages. But somehow I never dreamt of danger, not even while in the centre of a tornado in the Indian Ocean at night, and if there be a more fearful experience than that in the life of a mariner, I have yet to encounter it.
“Nor did I dream of danger even when seated of a night under the bright stars at the fo’c’stle head, while the men spun yarn after yarn of the awful dangers they had come through.
“‘I’ve been wrecked often and often,’ said our old ‘bo’sun’ one night. ‘I was in the Bombay when she was burned; I was a man-o’-war’s man then. Ah! Kennie, lad, it is a fearful thing, a fire at sea. I hope you’ll never see a burning ship. Over seventy of my shipmates were doomed that night, and some of them met worse deaths than drowning.
“‘Another time,’ he went on, ‘I was the only one saved out of a gunboat. I was taken off a bit of wreckage and rigging by the lifeboat after drifting about for twelve wet, cold, weary hours. Strange thing was this. I had been made captain of the foretop only a week before we were wrecked. ’Tis funny, mate, but it was on that same foretop I floated about so long. He! he! I was captain of the foretop then, and no mistake, and monarch of all I surveyed.’
