He finished the voyage, and for the first time since going to sea chose his boarding house--the Sailors' Home--and here he talked with second mates and a better class of seamen. He borrowed an Epitome of Navigation, looked it over, and bought one in a second-hand shop, with other books that appealed to him. He stopped drinking, and, with money in his pocket, was able to choose his next ship, an English deep-water craft, whose rules were such as to give him his afternoon watch below and time for study. He furbished up his unused knowledge of arithmetic, and in this ship found a kindly disposed first mate, who lent him an old sextant to puzzle over and become familiar with. He reached for the theory of seamanship as distinct from navigation, and, procuring such textbooks as he could find in foreign ports, mastered the reasons of the various evolutions which so far he had helped perform under orders. When able to, he applied for and passed a second mate's examination, and won a Board of Trade certificate. Then he bought himself a sextant. He made two voyages in this ship, when a sick and dying second mate left a vacancy, and this vacancy was filled by Bridge, who had attracted the captain's attention by his intelligence and energy. An officer now, his progress was more rapid. He reached farther, laying in for private use magazines and standard works of the world's literature, and gave himself that quiet self-confidence so valuable in conversation, and so difficult for a seaman to acquire. His voice, while losing none of its power to be heard against the wind, became softer and evenly modulated. Few could have told, from his manner and personality that he had not gone through the usual course of an English apprentice, with a capital of good home influences to start with, and a protection from bad as he advanced. No captious shipowner's wife would have said he was not a gentleman. In seven years from the birth of his ambition, with an English master's certificate and an American ocean license to his credit, he shipped first mate of a large sky-sailyard American ship at New York, and at the orders of the agent who had engaged him took her down to the Horseshoe to await the captain, who was also the owner, he said, and was to join her on the day of sailing. The captain came on the tug that was to tow them to sea, and stepped aboard, brisk, bewhiskered, and peppery, and with him was a young woman who, as Bridge was introduced, he said was his daughter, who would make the voyage with them.