“You don’t know the sort of life that you will have to lead aboard ship, Jack,” he observed. “Boys afloat are not the happy-go-lucky sort of chaps they seem on shore, let me tell you; but, to be sure, they have got discipline there, which is more than I can say there is to be found in a certain place that you know of.” And my father uttered a deep sigh. We were walking, one evening after tea, up and down our bit of a garden, while he smoked his pipe. He was allowed to live out of barracks, and we had a small cottage a little way off. “I don’t know, Jack, but what I should not be sorry, if my company was ordered on service afloat,” he observed, confidentially, after a minute’s silence. “Your new mother is a good woman—a very good woman; about her I made no mistake, though she is not equal, by a long chalk, to her that’s gone; but oh! Jack,” and he sighed again, “I did not take into account those young cubs of hers. They will not rest till they have driven your sisters out of the house, as they have driven the boys; and then—and then—why, I suppose, they will drive me away too!” My poor father! I sighed at the thoughts of his domestic happiness being so completely destroyed, in consequence of the advice of King Solomon not having been followed—the rod having been spared, and the children spoiled. The following day, my father being sent on duty to Portsea, took me with him. Soon after we landed, I met, just on the inner end of the Common Hard, an old friend of mine, Dick Lee, a waterman. “Father,” I said, “if Dick will let me, I’ll stop, and have a pull in his wherry. As I am going to sea, I should like to learn to row better than I now do.” My father, glad to keep me out of harm’s way, told me that, if Dick wished it, I might remain with him. Well pleased, I ran down the Hard, and jumped into old Dick’s wherry. Dick intended that I should sit in his boat, and just practise with the oars, but I had no notion of that sort; so, casting off the painter, I shoved away from the shore. I kept pulling up and down for some time, and round and round, till my arms ached; when, determining to take a longer voyage, I turned the boat’s head out into the harbour. The tide was running out: I went on very swimmingly, I did not think of that. I had not, however, got very far, when I heard old Dick’s voice shouting to me— “Come back, Jack, come back, you young jackanapes!”