From this time the duty of the ship was well and smartly done. The superiority of my Father as a thorough practical seaman must have been both felt and acknowledged: the distance at which he soared beyond the others was too great and obvious for the intrusion even of that bane of social concord—jealousy; and the effect seems to have been the infusion of a higher character into the ordinary crew. Well, therefore, did our fugitives from a Spanish prison repay to ship, captain, owners and crew, the benefits they themselves received. SECTION VI.—_Entrance on, and Progress in training in, the Greenland Whale-Fishery._ After his exciting adventure in escaping from imprisonment in an enemy’s country, my father retired, for a season, from his seafaring pursuits. He returned to the homestead of his fathers, where, assisting in the management of the farm, he remained about two or three years. During this interval he married; the object of his choice being Lady Mary, (viz. Mary, with the prefix of Lady, taken, not ostentatiously, but in rural simplicity, from the characteristic designation of the day of her birth, which was on _Lady-day_), the eldest daughter of Mr. John Smith, of Cropton,—a rural district about five-and-twenty miles from Whitby,—who resided on a small landed property which he had inherited from his ancestors. By no means satisfied, however, with this retirement,—which recent hard and perilous service had, for a time, rendered congenial to his feelings,—and as little contented with the limitation of his unusual energies to such a contracted scope of employment, he turned his attention again to the sea. And in this object he at length found a congenial opening, in a region and employment admirably adapted to his physical constitution and adventurous spirit, the _Greenland Whale Fishery_; a trade which, at this period, the latter end of the eighteenth century, was pursued with considerable enterprise from the port of Whitby. On this new species of maritime service he embarked in the ship Henrietta, Captain Crispin Bean, in the spring of the year 1785, as one of the seamen. Of the incidents of his training in this adventurous and stirring profession, we have, unfortunately, no special records. To the requirements, however, in every species of knowledge and duty connected with the Arctic navigation and the capture of the huge cetacea of the north, he gave himself with such tact and perseverance, that, on his sixth voyage, we find him to have risen over the heads of all his original associates, and occupying the position of second officer, the _specksioneer_ of the ship.[C] A single incident, though of the most trifling nature, has been preserved in connection with this period of my Father’s life, which I am induced to record, simply because there was something in it illustrative of character.