At last I asked Sam timidly if he really thought I stood any chance of getting a ship there. He looked down at me as if he had just seen me for the first time, pondered a moment (but about nothing I am sure), then suddenly remembering my question, said, "Oh no, not till you've a-growed a bit. You better stow-away." I said, "Thank you, sir," and moved off fully determined, whatever happened, not to stow-away. Going to sea, I thought, was bad enough in any case, but from what I had heard stowaways stood a good chance of getting first a good hammering, then a tremendous lot of hard work, and very little food, and prison at the journey's end. It was a programme that did not appeal to me. Nevertheless, it was with a sinking heart that I turned away from Thames Street that night. I felt that I could not hold my own in the rough and tumble life of the streets much longer, and I craved with all my heart and soul for a master. I know that there are boys who, even in good homes, have the nomad instinct so strongly implanted that they cannot be contented anywhere, will endure, nay, embrace voluntarily all kinds of privation, so long as they may vagabondise, but I was not one of them. My early training was all against it. I longed for a home, and to have some one in authority over me, although I could not help admitting to myself that I had not made the best of my chances, such as they were. But as the darkest hour is just before the dawn according to the adage, so when my prospects of getting to sea were at what appeared to be the lowest ebb, I suddenly bethought me of the possibility of finding my uncle, whom I have before alluded to as being master of a ship. More by accident than design, I discovered him, and although he was evidently not overjoyed to see me he agreed to take me to sea with him at the wage of five shillings per month. Of my early experiences at sea, I have told at length in the "Log of a Sea Waif," and therefore I cannot repeat them here. I can only point out that there seemed to be a fatality about the matter, something working against my becoming a seafarer, since I was shipwrecked on my first voyage and landed in Havana, where, because of the old trouble, my puny size, I could not get a ship, and consequently I returned to one of my old employments, namely, that of billiard-marker. It was at the Hotel St Isabel in the Plaza de Armas, and here for some months I led a very happy if entirely demoralising life for one so young. I received no wages, but the best of food and lodging, and the tips given me by the frequenters of the billiard-room were so many that I always had plenty of money.