At this time, too, steam had not entirely driven the sailing passenger ship from the Atlantic trade. Whether I ever saw the celebrated _Dreadnought_ I cannot quite remember, but she was then in her prime and had made passages across more than once in ten or twelve days. It was generally a very rough life on the Atlantic, and whether in steam or sail, canvas was carried to its extreme limit. There were in existence a class of mates who were prime seamen and fighting men in addition. The crew were a very hard-bitten lot too, but a reputation once earned in that trade was not easily forgotten, and when a man shipped in a western ocean packet, he was generally pretty well cognisant of the treatment he was likely to receive on board. That particular trade had its customs, and its laws, though unwritten, were none the less binding. It had its own rough code of honour too. I shall deal later on with a few of the methods that were put in practice in order to ascertain just exactly how far a crew would be allowed to take liberties, but I want to get home again in this chapter. We filled up with the necessary number of “packet rats” as they were called, for the run home, and I saw these men come on board with great curiosity. They were a queer-looking lot, but fine big fellows, not extravagantly burdened with clothes, and with faces that carried plainly the marks of many a scrapping-match. But here the rough code of honour came in. These men found themselves in a little quiet peaceable ship, and they consequently did not consider it compatible with their ideas to make trouble where they could have had it all their own way. They behaved as decently as any men I have been shipmates with. We had also on board some new stores for the trip, and it was possible to eat the biscuits, seasoned only with the remembrance of the weevils of the last lot. Still bad food will eventually tell upon the best constitution, and it took some considerable time for me to shake off all the ill-effects; in point of fact when I landed in London I had a hole in my leg that one could have put a small egg inside. The fates were good to us and we made a fair run across. With the first smell of the Channel away went the remembrance of all troubles, and eventually the ship was docked and I stepped on shore from the _Lord Nelson_ “out of my time” and a free man. This, however, was, as I fully recognised, only the beginning of things. My kind friends nursed and fed me back to a decent state of health, and then came the ordeal of getting my second mate’s certificate. In this connection I should like to pay a tribute to the memory of a good and clever man, the late John Newton, master of the Navigation School in Wells Street. He was tireless and unremitting in his endeavours to impart information, and his patience with pupils of all sorts was a thing to be gratefully remembered.