IT is a gray, melancholy spring day in the year 1771. You are at Chatham, looking on to the deck of his Majesty’s ship _Raisonnable_, commanded by Captain Maurice Suckling. The sixty-four is not yet ready for sea; her chief officers are not yet aboard. On the quay you see a thin, delicate-looking lad of twelve years of age dressed in a “middy’s” uniform. The wind bites shrewdly; the lad shivers in his thin jacket, and there is something like a tear in his eye. This morning his father left him in London to make the best of his way to Chatham and there join his ship. He has wandered about, friendless and alone, for hours; he is hungry, footsore, and weary, and he cannot discover the vessel to which he is posted. You feel sorry for the lonely little fellow, but his troubles are now over. A kindly officer accosts him, and brings him on board. The lad’s eyes gleam as he gazes on the ship which is to be his home. He glances down at the almond-white decks; he looks around at grinning lines of black cannon; he turns his eyes aloft to the symmetrical fabric of spars and sails and rigging. It is a wonder-world of delight. There is fascination everywhere—in the red muzzles of the guns, in their white tompions, in the petticoat trousers and long pigtails of the sailors. His young eyes, brilliant with intellect, dart hither and thither; he is astonished and delighted by all the novel sights which he sees. This frail weakling is Horatio Nelson, the proudest name in the naval annals of his land. He is to develop into the “unique sailor,” the great hero of his race, the man whose statue is decked with laurel and whose fame is eagerly commemorated year by year, though well-nigh a century has elapsed since he passed away. Horatio Nelson was born in the year before Wolfe captured Quebec. He was the son of a plain country parson with a quiver full of children and a modest income. The future hero first saw the light in the pleasant rectory of Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk. At nine years of age his mother died, and the weak, sickly lad grew up under the care of his grandmother. There was nothing remarkable about the boy’s school days, though many stories are told of his mischievous exploits, his fearlessness, and his high sense of honour. The best-known story relates that as a little boy he strayed from the house on a birds’-nesting excursion, and was absent so long that his grandmother grew alarmed and sent out servants to look for him. At length young Horatio was discovered sitting placidly by the side of a stream which he could not cross. When brought back his grandmother said, “I wonder that you were not driven home by hunger and fear.” “Fear! grandma,” said the boy. “Fear! what is that? I never saw it!” Truly the boy was father to the man. To the end of his life he never saw fear or knew what it meant.