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 3000-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 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 towards 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 for ever 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; 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 the
language at any rate, and of all the countries in Europe it is