Let me conclude with one more reminiscence. In a brig of which I was mate, on the East African coast, we shipped two Zanzibar Arabs as cook and steward. The skipper had his wife on board, and she, poor woman, on the passage home, was in danger of being starved to death. So the bo'sun and myself took it in turns to oversee those savages, cannily, too, for they valued not their life one jot, and would as soon have murdered us as look. Oh, how we suffered! At last we reached St. Helena, and got some fresh beef and vegetables. I cooked a dinner of these luxuries, and when it was brought into the cabin, the lady actually wept with delight at the prospect of one decent meal. CHAPTER XXV. THE APPRENTICE (SUGGESTIONS). I may as well admit at the outset of this chapter that I approach it with a heavy sense of responsibility. For many reasons. I am exceedingly anxious about the future of our Merchant Service; and the decay of the apprentice system at sea is full of menace for that future. Again, I know that many dear friends throughout the length and breadth of this land of ours are looking with pathetic eagerness for some guidance upon this subject. They want to gratify their sons' inbred craving for a sea-life; but what are the prospects? How will it affect their boys, supposing they find, after a short acquaintance with the sea, that they are not fit for it at all? In short, there are so many middle-class folks ready to apprentice their boys in the Merchant Service, if that service is worth their attention as a probable life occupation, and they are so pathetically eager and earnest to obtain reliable information and enlightenment on their utter ignorance of all the details of a nautical life, that it behoves all who have that information, to give it carefully, without bias, and intelligibly. That is therefore no reason why they should withhold it altogether, from craven fear of being upbraided for after-consequences of following the advice they had given. With this in my mind, I would say at the outset that I believe the system of apprenticeship might be revived, with great advantage to the country and to individuals, but it needs revision. As it exists at present its only effect is to flood the Merchant Service with an enormous number of certificated men, who cannot get ships as officers, and who find the fo'c'sle society disgusting, having trained themselves to expect something better. Worse still, it will be found to have unsettled many lads for any steady land occupation, while completely disenchanting them as to the fine life they expected at sea. It has just aroused in these well-brought-up, home-keeping youths the nomad instinct that is latent in every human breast, and the love of wandering once established, nothing short of main force will make that man a settled citizen again until he reaches middle age.