he could remember, a procession of ships had come sailing in to anchor
by the great red buoy immediately beneath his nursery window.
They belonged to all nations, and hailed from all imaginable ports; and
from the day his nurse had first stood him upon a chair to watch them,
these had been the great interest of his life. He soon came to know
them all--French brigs and _chasse-marees_, Russian fore-and-afters,
Dutch billyboys, galliots from the East coast, and Thames hay-barges
with vanes and wind-boards. He could tell you why the Italians were
deep in the keel, why the Danes were manned by youngsters, and why these
youngsters deserted, although their skippers looked, and indeed were,
such good-natured fellows; what food the French crews hunted in the
seaweed under the cliff, and when the Baltic traders would be driven
southward by the ice. Once acquainted with a vessel, he would recognise
her at any distance, though by what signs he could no more tell than we
why we recognise a friend.

On his seventh birthday he was given a sailing boat, on condition that
he learned to read; but, although he kept by the bargain honestly, at
the end of a month he handled her better than he was likely to handle
his book in a year. He had a companion and instructor, of course--
a pensioner who had left the Navy to become in turn fisherman,
yachtsman, able seaman on board a dozen sailing vessels, and now
yachtsman again. His name was Billy, and he taught the boy many
mysteries, from the tying of knots to the reading of weather-signs;
how to beach a boat, how to take a conger off the hook, how to gaff a
cuttle and avoid its ink. . . . In return the boy gave him his heart,
and even something like worship.

One fine day, as they tacked to and fro a mile and more from the
harbour's mouth, whiffing for mackerel, the boy looked up from his seat