upon a point of stowage.

I warned him that I had no experience of a lost rudder at sea,
and gave him two classical examples of makeshifts out of a

text-book. In exchange he described to me a jury-rudder he had
invented himself years before, when in command of a

three-thousand-ton steamer. It was, I declare, the cleverest
contrivance imaginable. "May be of use to you some day," he

concluded. "You will go into steam presently. Everybody goes
into steam."

There he was wrong. I never went into steam--not really. If I
only live long enough I shall become a bizarre relic of a dead

barbarism, a sort of monstrousantiquity, the only seaman of the
dark ages who had never gone into steam--not really.

Before the examination was over he imparted to me a few
interesting details of the transport service in the time of the

Crimean War.
"The use of wire rigging became general about that time, too," he

observed. "I was a very young master then. That was before you
were born."

"Yes, sir. I am of the year of 1857."
"The Mutiny year," he commented, as if to himself, adding in a

louder tone that his ship happened then to be in the Gulf of
Bengal, employed under a government charter.

Clearly the transport service had been the making of this
examiner, who so unexpectedly had given me an insight into his

existence, awakening in me the sense of the continuity of that
sea life into which I had stepped from outside; giving a touch of

human intimacy to the machinery of official relations. I felt
adopted. His experience was for me, too, as though he had been

an ancestor.
Writing my long name (it has twelve letters) with laborious care

on the slip of blue paper, he remarked:
"You are of Polish extraction."

"Born there, sir."
He laid down the pen and leaned back to look at me as it were for

the first time.
"Not many of your nationality in our service, I should think. I

never remember meeting one either before or after I left the sea.
Don't remember ever hearing of one. An inland people, aren't

you?"
I said yes--very much so. We were remote from the sea not only

by situation, but also from a complete absence of indirect
association, not being a commercial nation at all, but purely

agricultural. He made then the quaintreflection that it was "a
long way for me to come out to begin a sea life"; as if sea life

were not precisely a life in which one goes a long way from home.
I told him, smiling, that no doubt I could have found a ship much

nearer my native place, but I had thought to myself that if I was
to be a seaman, then I would be a British seaman and no other.

It was a matter of deliberate choice.
He nodded slightly at that; and, as he kept on looking at me

interrogatively, I enlarged a little, confessing that I had spent
a little time on the way in the Mediterranean and in the West

Indies. I did not want to present myself to the British Merchant
Service in an altogether green state. It was no use telling him

that my mysteriousvocation was so strong that my very wild oats
had to be sown at sea. It was the exact truth, but he would not

have understood the somewhat exceptionalpsychology of my
sea-going, I fear.

"I suppose you've never come across one of your countrymen at
sea. Have you, now?"

I admitted I never had. The examiner had given himself up to the
spirit of gossiping idleness. For myself, I was in no haste to

leave that room. Not in the least. The era of examinations was
over. I would never again see that friendly man who was a

professional ancestor, a sort of grandfather in the craft.
Moreover, I had to wait till he dismissed me, and of that there

was no sign. As he remained silent, looking at me, I added:
"But I have heard of one, some years ago. He seems to have been

a boy serving his time on board a Liverpool ship, if I am not
mistaken."

"What was his name?"
I told him.

"How did you say that?" he asked, puckering up his eyes at the
uncouth sound.

I repeated the name very distinctly.
"How do you spell it?"

I told him. He moved his head at the impracticable nature of
that name, and observed:

"It's quite as long as your own--isn't it?"
There was no hurry. I had passed for master, and I had all the

rest of my life before me to make the best of it. That seemed a
long time. I went leisurely through a small mental calculation,

and said:
"Not quite. Shorter by two letters, sir."

"Is it?" The examiner pushed the signed blue slip across the
table to me, and rose from his chair. Somehow this seemed a very

abrupt ending of our relations, and I felt almost sorry to part
from that excellent man, who was master of a ship before the

whisper of the sea had reached my cradle. He offered me his hand
and wished me well. He even made a few steps toward the door

with me, and ended with good-natured advice.
"I don't know what may be your plans, but you ought to go into

steam. When a man has got his master's certificate it's the
proper time. If I were you I would go into steam."

I thanked him, and shut the door behind me definitely on the era
of examinations. But that time I did not walk on air, as on the

first two occasions. I walked across the hill of many beheadings
with measured steps. It was a fact, I said to myself, that I was

now a British master mariner beyond a doubt. It was not that I
had an exaggerated sense of that very modestachievement, with

which, however, luck, opportunity, or any extraneous influence
could have had nothing to do. That fact, satisfactory and

obscure in itself, had for me a certain ideal significance. It
was an answer to certain outspoken scepticism and even to some

not very kind aspersions. I had vindicated myself from what had
been cried upon as a stupidobstinacy or a fantastic caprice. I

don't mean to say that a whole country had been convulsed by my
desire to go to sea. But for a boy between fifteen and sixteen,

sensitive enough, in all conscience, the commotion of his little
world had seemed a very considerable thing indeed. So

considerable that, absurdly enough, the echoes of it linger to
this day. I catch myself in hours of solitude and retrospect

meeting arguments and charges made thirty-five years ago by
voices now forever still; finding things to say that an assailed

boy could not have found, simply because of the mysteriousness of
his impulses to himself. I understood no more than the people who

called upon me to explain myself. There was no precedent. I
verily believe mine was the only case of a boy of my nationality

and antecedents taking a, so to speak, standing jump out of his
racial surroundings and associations. For you must understand

that there was no idea of any sort of "career" in my call. Of
Russia or Germany there could be no question. The nationality,

the antecedents, made it impossible. The feeling against the
Austrian service was not so strong, and I dare say there would

have been no difficulty in finding my way into the Naval School
at Pola. It would have meant six months' extra grinding at

German, perhaps; but I was not past the age of admission, and in
other respects I was well qualified. This expedient to palliate

my folly was thought of--but not by me. I must admit that in
that respect my negative was accepted at once. That order of

feeling was comprehensible enough to the most inimical of my
critics. I was not called upon to offer explanations; but the

truth is that what I had in view was not a naval career, but the
sea. There seemed no way open to it but through France. I had