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There were several midshipmen on the poop running about. They glanced at me out of the corner of their eyes as they passed. I could not but envy them, for they seemed quite at home, whilst here was I, trembling nervously by the side of my papa, staring up at the masts, and wondering if ever I should be made to creep up those great heights, and if so, what was to become of me when I had reached the top? There was no need, indeed, to glance at my buttons to know that I was a “first voyager.” My wandering eyes and open mouth were assurance as strong as though I had been labelled “greenhorn.” My father, stepping up to one of the midshipmen, asked if the captain was on board.

“I don’t think he is,” said the youngster.

“This is my son,” said my father, “who has come to join the Lady Violet. Are there any formalities to go through—any book to be signed by him—we are rather at a loss?”

All too young as I was to be an observer, I could yet see a spirit of laughing mischief flash into the lad’s brown handsome face, and I have no doubt that he would have told me to go forward and seek for the cook and report myself, or have started me on some other fool’s errand of a like sort, but for a sunburnt man in a blue-cloth coat coming up to us, and asking my father what he wanted; on which the midshipman slunk away and joined two other midshipmen, who, on his speaking to them, began to shake with laughter.