Salvation, O! the joyful sound, 'Tis music to our ears. Whereupon at once the mob took up the chant, sang the hymn, with their strong masculine lungs; the clubs were let fall, and, the hymn ended, they dispersed harmlessly. James Silk went to sea in the _Lady Harriet_, a Government packet. On his third voyage to Lisbon he was captured by a French corvette and assigned to prison at Corunna; he was then about ten years old, and the gaoler's daughter of the same age fell in love with him, and softened the rigour of his captivity by bringing him dainties from her father's table. She tried to induce the boy to elope with her, but James had sufficient English common sense not to accept the offer, and finally he was sent to Lisbon, obliged to tramp the whole way, several hundred miles, barefooted, and begging food and a lodging on his way. At Lisbon he was taken on board the _Prince of Wales_, and returned to England, where his mother induced him to leave the sea, and provided him with a small stationer's and bookseller's shop on the Fish Strand, Falmouth. His mother died in 1804, and when James Silk was aged only nineteen he married Elizabeth Jennings, a farmer's daughter. He got tired of being a shopkeeper and volunteered on board a man-of-war; but on seeing a seaman flogged round the fleet for mutiny, was so disgusted with the sight that he deserted, and started a bookshop at Plymouth Dock. However one of the trustees of his wife's inheritance had speculated with the money in smuggling ventures and lost all, so that J. S. Buckingham became bankrupt. He went to sea again, and was appointed chief officer on board the _Titus_, bound for Trinidad, Captain Jennings, perhaps a kinsman of his wife. At the age of twenty-two he became commander of a vessel, and made several voyages to the West Indies and in the Mediterranean. In these latter he rapidly acquired a knowledge of and even fluency in speech in French, Italian, Greek, and Arabic, and this determined him to undertake mercantile life at Malta; but the plague having broken out there in 1818, he was prevented from landing, and resolved to try his fortune at Smyrna, but was unsuccessful. He then went to Alexandria, and thence to Cairo, where he made the acquaintance and gained the esteem of Mahomet Ali, then Pasha of Egypt.