"Well, Nelson, you look starved, and more like a drowned rat than a midshipman. How long since you had a square meal?" "Since breakfast." "And why didn't you stop in the town and have a bite on your way here?" "I promised my father to come straight on to the docks, sir, and report for duty. I said I wouldn't stop until I got here." "So nothing could have kept you back, eh? Well, you've reported for duty now, as I'm your superior officer. I don't have to be on board ship for half an hour, so my first order to you is that you come with me to a cook-shop and have some of the roast beef of old England before you set out to sea." Nothing loath, now that his promise was kept, Nelson went with the lieutenant into one of the small, winding Chatham streets, and entered an inn much frequented by sailors. Here the officer ordered a hot supper, and sat by the boy while the latter ate it. Nelson was nearly famished; it was a delight to the lieutenant to watch the satisfying of such an appetite. A little later the officer and the boy were rowed out to the frigate, and Nelson duly delivered by his new friend into the care of the ship's commander. His uncle looked at the boy askance; he seemed very pale and delicate and undersized, even for a boy of thirteen, but the uncle had promised to take him on trial as midshipman, and so, though with much misgiving, he found him his berth. He little knew what the sight of that Channel Fleet and the smell of the salt water meant to the new midshipman. The boy's uncle, Captain Suckling by name, who was in command of this sixty-four gun man-o'-war, had been trained in the principles of the old English navy, which were that hardship was good for a sailor, and that the more a man was battered about in time of peace the better he would fight in time of war. Everything above decks was spick and span, and young Horatio gazed with wondering admiration at the neatness of the white decks continually scraped and holystoned until they fairly glistened in the sun, at the imposing size and length of the long lines of black cannon, the special pride of every officer, and at the symmetry and the wonderful height of spars and sails and rigging, forming a very network in the sky. He had loved boats since the days when he had pumped water into the horse-trough before his father's house in order that he might sail paper boats in it, and now it seemed almost impossible to believe that he stood on the deck of a ship of his Majesty's service and was to have a hand in caring for all this cannon and rigging. He looked wonderingly at the sailors, a bronzed, hardy lot, in their white jackets and trousers that flared widely at the bottom, wearing their hair according to the custom of the day in long pig-tails down their backs.