His first month at sea was a revelation to the country-bred lad. In place of the home hedged in by love, into which the foulnesses so prevalent in great cities never penetrated, he found himself met at every point by profanity and worse. In place of having all his bodily needs cared for, all the decencies of life made easy for him, he was left to his own ignorant devices, and all the dreadful consequences of being his own master in his own time descended upon him without warning. The captain was a careless, callous man, who only looked upon the apprentices as an inefficient supplement to a scanty crew. And while he worked them mercilessly in consequence, he found it no part of his duty to look after the welfare of either their bodies or their souls. Under this treatment the boy soon became a finished young blackguard in thought, and so soon as the opportunity arrived to put the evil theories he had so readily absorbed into practice, he flung himself into all forms of evil within his reach with a recklessness and zest that were horrible to contemplate. Finally, he ran away from his ship in company with an older apprentice, breaking his indentures, and cutting off definitely the last hold his home had upon him. A wild time of sin, suffering, and sorrow followed. Yes, sorrow; although, in the same Spartan fashion practised by so many thousands of wanderers like himself, he concealed it under an assumption of utter indifference, utter godlessness. At last, when in the throes of a prolonged debauch he was staggering along one of the lowest streets in Callao, he was seized by a gang of predatory ruffians, beaten out of what little sense he had left, and conveyed on board an American ship bound thence to England. This is the process called by seamen “Shanghai-ing.” It would be impossible to convey to people living sheltered lives on shore how terrible were the physical sufferings of the poor lad now, bruised from head to heel, shaking from illness brought on by his excesses, yet compelled to toil in superhuman fashion under pain of being savagely beaten again. But he felt no repentance, he only cursed his “luck,” and dumbly endured, as seamen do. Then one night, during the keeping of his lookout, one of his watchmates whom he had hitherto despised as a mild, say-nothing-to-nobody sort of a duffer, came quietly up on to the forecastle head, and, standing near him, gazed steadfastly out upon the loneliness of the midnight ocean, for some time saying not a word. The full moon had just emerged from a dense black cloud, driving before her, apparently, the darkness that had so recently reigned, and paling the lustrous stars with her glorious radiance, while every tiny wavelet rippling the peaceful sea became instantly edged with molten silver. And the influence of the hour, amid all the eternal immensity of the environment, made for breathless awe, silent involuntary worship of the unseen yet palpably present God.