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Three days afterwards Captain Burns again called on the Browns with a lot of correspondence from his ship-owning acquaintances, and after carefully going over the merits of each opening presented, gave his advice to accept the offer of quite a small firm in Liverpool, owning three barques of medium size, from 800 to 1200 tons, usually making very long voyages to out-of-the way parts of the world, wherever, in fact, they could get remunerative freights, no easy thing in these days of universal steamer competition.

He gave as his reason that this firm was not a limited company, but privately owned, and that the owners took a direct interest in the welfare of their servants, especially of their apprentices, whom they looked upon as their personal protégés, for whose well-being they were directly responsible. The premium they demanded was £50 for four years, half of which was returnable as wages. The requisite outfit would cost, so the captain said, about twenty pounds, and the total cost for the four years would be, or rather should be, less than £100. And if his advice were taken to accept the terms of Messrs. Chadwick & Son, Frank would within three weeks be at sea and his career begun, as they had a ship now loading for several ports in the South Sea Islands. She was a nice handy barque of about 1000 tons, only about fifteen years old, and he (the captain) knew her very well as being a most comfortable ship.