Among all these folk, intent upon their various occupations, what place was there for me, I wondered? I got in the way of a line of men on the quay side carrying large bales which I presumed had been unloaded from a ship there moored. One of them hustled me violently aside, another made a coarse jest upon me, and, raw and inexperienced as I was, bewildered by the strangeness of it all, I felt a sinking at the heart, and questioned for the first time whether I had been wise in forsaking the scenes I knew and venturing unbefriended into this outpost of the great world. I was standing apart, gazing at the shipping, when an old, weather-beaten sailor, smoking a black pipe, came up and accosted me. "Lost your bearings, matey?" he said in a very hoarse voice, which yet had a tone of friendliness. No doubt I looked foolish, for I knew no more than the dead what he meant. "Lor' bless you," he went on, "I knows all about it. 'Tis fifty year since I made a course for that 'ere port from Selwood way, and I stood like a stuck pig--like as you be standing now. Be you out o' Zummerzet, like me?" I told him I came from Shrewsbury. "Never heard tell of it," he said, "but seemingly they grow high in those parts. And what made ye steer for Bristowe, if I might ask?" Mr. Vetch had warned me against confiding in strangers; but there was something so honest in the old seaman's look that I, who have rarely been wrong in my instinctive judgment of men, determined to trust him, and told him so much of my story as I thought necessary. The result was that he took me under his wing, so to speak. He spent the whole morning with me, explaining to me the differences in build and rig between the vessels lying there, telling me a great deal about the duties of a seaman and the ways of life at sea. He counseled me very earnestly to give up my design and seek an employment on shore. "Sea life bean't for the likes of you," he said. "I don't know nothing about lawyers, saving them as they call sea lawyers, and they're rogues; but you'd better be a land lawyer than go to sea. 'Tis all very well for them as begin as officers, but for the men the life bean't fit for a dog. Aboard ship you'd meet some very rough company--very rough indeed. I don't pretend to be better nor most, but there be some terrible bad ones at sea. Of course it depends mostly on the skipper, but even where the skipper's a good 'un--and there be good and bad--he can't have his eyes everywhere, and I've knowed youngsters so bad used on board that they'd sooner ha' bin dead. Not but what you mightn't stand a chance, being a big fellow of your inches."