As I have said, I never saw anyone learn so rapidly as he did everything which came in his way. Before six weeks had passed, there was very little remaining for me to teach him. Every knot and splice he mastered in a week or so, and could make them as neatly as I did. I don't think he had ever before been up a ship's mast; but from the first day he was constantly aloft, examining the rigging, and seeing where all the ropes led to. I had shown him how to reef and furl sails, and the very first squall we had, he was among the foremost aloft to lay-out on the yard. His hands went as readily as those of the oldest seaman into the tar-bucket; and so, though when he came aboard they were fair and soft, they soon became as brown and hard as any of ours. With the theory of seamanship he was already well acquainted--such as the way by which the wind acts on the sails, the resistance offered by the water on the hull, and so on; so that, when any manoeuvre was performed, he at once knew the reason of it. It is not too much to say that before we crossed the line he was as good a seaman, in many respects, as most of the hands on board; and certainly he would have made a better officer than any of us forward. We were bound round Cape Horn, and Captain Carr intended to try his fortune on the borders of the Antarctic ice-fields, in the neighbourhood of New Zealand and the coast of Japan, among the East India Islands; and those wide-spreading groups, among which are found the Friendly Islands, the Navigators, the Feejees, the New Hebrides, the Loyalty Islands, and New Caledonia, and known under the general name of Polynesia. Perhaps other places might be visited, so that we had a pretty wide range over which our voyage was likely to extend. People at home are little aware, in general, of the great number of places a South-Seaman visits in the course of a three or four years' whaling-voyage; and certainly in no other trade is a lad of a roving disposition so likely to be able to gratify his tastes. The first place we touched at was Porto Praya, in the island of Saint Jago, one of the Cape de Verds, our captain being anxious to fill up with water, and to get for the crew a supply of fruit and vegetables and poultry, which are here to be procured in abundance. Sailors, however, are apt to forget that fruit, at all events, is not to be found all the year round; and I have seen people very indignant because the fruit-trees were not bearing their ripe produce at the very moment they were honouring the place by their presence, and heartily abuse previous visitors for having deceived them.