"In gallant Duncan's fleet
Had sung out, yo heave ho!"—
purchased a small estate in Northumberland, a few miles from the banks of the Coquet. He might be fifty years of age; but his weatherbeaten countenance gave him the appearance of a man of sixty. Around the collar of a Newfoundland dog, which followed him more faithfully than his shadow, were engraved the words, "Captain Benjamin Cookson;" but, after he had purchased the estate to which I have alluded, his poorer neighbours called him Squire Ben. He was a strange mixture of enthusiasm, shrewdness, courage, comicality, generosity, and humanity. Ben, on becoming a country gentleman, became a keen fisher; and, as it is said, "a fellow feeling makes one wondrous kind," I also, being fond of the sport, became a mighty favourite with the bluff-faced squire. It was on a fine bracing day in March, after a tolerable day's fishing, we went to dine and spend the afternoon in the Angler's Inn, which stands at the north end of the bridge over the Coquet, at the foot of the hill leading up to Longframlington. Observing that Ben was in good sailing trim, I dropped a hint that an account of his voyages and cruises on the ocean of life would be interesting.
Ah, my boy (said Ben), you are there with your soundings, are you? Well, you shall have a long story by the shortest tack. Somebody was my father (continued he), but whom I know not. This much I know about my mother: she was cook in a gentleman's family in this county, and being a fat, portly body—something of the build of her son, I take it—no one suspected that she was in a certain delicate situation, until within a few days before I was born. Then, with very grief and shame, the poor thing became delirious; and, as an old servant of the family has since told me, you could see the very flesh melting off her bones. While she continued in a state of delirium, your humble servant, poor Benjamin, was born; and without recovering her senses, she died within an hour after my birth, leaving me—a beautiful orphan, as you see me now—a legacy to the workhouse and the world. Benjamin was my mother's family name—from which I suppose they had something of the Jew in their blood; though, Heaven knows, I have none in my composition. So they who had the christening of me gave me my mother's name of Benjamin, as my Christian name: and from her occupation as cook, they surnamed me Cookson—that is, "Benjamin the Cook's son," simply Benjamin Cookson, more simply, Squire Ben. Well, you see, my boy, I was born beneath the roof of an English squire, and before I was three hours old was handed over to the workhouse. This was the beginning of my life. The first thing I remember was hating the workhouse—the second was loving the sea. Yes, sir, before I was seven years old, I used to steal away in the noble company of my own good self, and sit down upon a rock on the solitary beach, watching the ships, the waves, and the sea-birds—wishing to be a wave, a ship, or a bird—ay, sir, wishing to be anything but poor orphan Ben. The sea was to me what my parents should have been—a thing I delighted to look upon. I loved the very music of its maddest storms; though, quietly, I have since had enough of them. I began my career before I was ten years of age, as cabin-boy in a collier. My skipper was a dare-devil, tear-away sort of fellow, who cared no more for running down one of your coasting craft than for turning a quid in his mouth. But he was a good, honest, kindhearted sort of a chap, for all that—barring that the rope's-end was too often in his hand.
"Ben," says he to me one misty day, when we were taking coals across the herring pond to the Dutchmen, and the man at the helm could not see half-way to the mast-head—"Ben, my little fellow, can you cipher?"
"Yes, sir," says I.
"The deuce you can!" says he; "then you're just the lad for me. And do you understand logarithms?"
"No, sir," says I; "what sort of wood be they?"
"Wood be hanged! you blockhead!" said he, raising his foot in a passion, but a smile on the corners of his mouth shoved it to the deck again before it reached me. "But come, Ben, you can cipher, you say; well, I know all about the radius and tangents, and them sort of things, and stating the question; but blow me if I have a multiplication-table on board—my fingers are of no use at a long number, and I am always getting out of it counting by chalks;—so come below, Ben, and look over the question, and let us find where we are. I know I have made a mistake some way; and mark ye, Ben, if you don't find it out—ye that can cipher—there's a rope's-end to your supper, and that's all."
Howsever, sir, I did find it out, and I was regarded as a prodigy in the ship ever after. The year before I was out of my apprenticeship, our vessel was laid up for four months, and the skipper sent me to school during the time, at his own expense, saying—
"Get navigation, Ben, my boy, and you will one day be a commodore—by Jupiter, you'll be an honour to the navy."