Yet when I left the ship he bade me quite an affectionate farewell, bidding me remember how hard he had laboured for my benefit, that every blow he had given me was solely aimed at making me more useful, and fitting me for my duties. At the time I felt that he was lying, and that his treatment of me was dictated by that savage lust of cruelty to an unresisting victim that grows alarmingly with the yielding thereto, and that had I only possessed the strength and courage to retaliate, he would speedily have altered his mind. But now I do not know. I feel that perhaps he _may_ have been sincere. Men were self-deceivers ever; and there are few self-deceptions more common among mankind than this--that cruelty is a splendid aid to education. But here let me say that cruelty to boys was far more common among the officers than the men. If a boy was willing and respectful and clean, it was very seldom that he got beaten in the fo'c'sle. There was almost always a certain amount of public spirit which made for justice where half a dozen of even the roughest men were gathered together. I have known one exception to this good rule--have experienced it in my own person--where out of a whole crew of eight there was not one man enough to protest against the daily practice of cruelty to me. More than that, they encouraged a big boy, who was getting the same pay as myself, but whose qualifications, except strength, were far inferior to mine, to pummel me too. Such a gang I have never met with before or since, and I am sure that the combination is uncommon. The majority of the boys going to sea to-day unapprenticed are drawn from the training ships, those good schools for the boy who is said to be unmanageable ashore. Coming from the wild and precarious life of the streets into such a ship as the _Warspite_, _Arethusa_, or _Cornwall_, is such a revelation to a boy, that for a little while he feels as if the bottom had fallen out of his world. For the anarchical condition, tempered by a salutary dread of the policeman, under which he has been living, there are substituted law and order, cleanliness and discipline; for regular short commons and dog-like snatching of sleep come good food regularly eaten, regular sleep at set times, regular play, and a sound prospect of benefits, very real indeed, for the patient worker in well-doing. Here the boy is taught all the essentials of seafaring except the actual going to sea, and in at least one instance that practical want is supplied, in that a small square-rigged vessel is kept, which, with selected boys for a crew, under the charge of experienced seamen, plies up and down the river under sail. And it may truly be said that a boy who has passed a couple of years under such treatment as this is as well prepared for becoming a good seaman as it is possible for a boy to be.