The boy Nelson was fearless and ambitious. It is related of him that, straying away from the house when a mere child, his grandmother thought he had been carried off by gypsies. When found sitting beside a brook which he could not cross, the old lady said, "I wonder, child, that hunger and fear did not drive you home." "Fear," said the boy, "I never saw fear; what is it?" At another time, some pears were wanted from the schoolmaster's garden. Without debating the question of the sin of stealing, nobody dared venture for fear of the consequences. Horatio volunteered to get them, was lowered at night by a sheet from his window, gathered the pears, and gave them to his mates, keeping none for himself. "I only took them," he said, "because every other boy was afraid." His father was poor, always in frail health, and apparently unable to do much for his numerous progeny. Horatio determined to do something for himself. Seeing in the newspaper that his uncle on his mother's side, Captain Maurice Suckling, had been appointed in the navy to the ship Raisonnable, of sixty-four guns, Horatio said to his brother, a year and a half older than himself, "Do, William, write to my father, and tell him that I should like to go to sea with Uncle Maurice." Mr. Nelson was at Bath for his health. He at once wrote to the captain about his twelve-year-old son, who was as sickly in body as himself. The uncle wrote back, "What has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he, above all the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea? But let him come, and the first time we go into action, a cannon-ball may knock off his head, and provide for him at once." His father took him to London, from whence he found his way to Chatham, where the ship was lying. His uncle was absent at the time, and the first few days were lonely in the extreme. The sailors were rough, their treatment by officers often harsh, not to say cruel, and the lad who had so yearned for the sea soon came to despise the Royal Navy. He soon went on a West Indian voyage, in a small merchant ship commanded by Mr. John Rathbone, who had served as master's mate under Captain Suckling. Here, with keen observation, and a constant desire to rise in his profession, he learned rapidly. Later, young Nelson went as coxswain under Captain Lutwidge in the Carcass on a Polar voyage. They were beset by the ice; left their ships, expecting they would be crushed, and dragged their boats by hand; had the usual fights with walruses and bears, Nelson exposing himself in an encounter with the latter, that he might carry a skin home to his father. Nelson's next voyage, at fifteen, was in the Seahorse, of twenty guns, to the East Indies in a squadron under Sir Edward Hughes. He was stationed at the foretop at watch and watch, where his attention to duty soon made him a midshipman.