Thomas Flinders, for that was the lad's name, was the only son of a retired major of the Cape Mounted Riflemen, who had, with the money realised by the sale of his commission, purchased a farm in the neighbourhood of Cape Town, and there settled down with his family, "turning his sword into a ploughshare." On this farm Master Tom first saw the light of day, and there he lived until within a few weeks of his eleventh birthday, when Major Flinders, finding that his son and heir was becoming somewhat troublesome and self-willed, packed him off to England to be educated at Rugby, under the great and good Doctor Arnold, who was then in the zenith of his fame. Five years of public-school life--three under Doctor Arnold [Arnold died in 1842], and two under his successor--worked wonders with young Flinders, and developed him into a plucky, straightforward English lad, full of fun and exuberant spirits, but without a spark of vice in his composition; a gentleman in the truest and noblest sense of the word, holding in hearty contempt aught that savoured of meanness or "bad form." Nor had the lad's physical education been neglected, for he became a very fair hand at most outdoor games and sports; from fives to football, from quoits to hare-and-hounds, and could play rough-and-tumble with any boy of his own weight. And now Tom Flinders, having imbibed the regulation quantum of Latin and Greek and a modicum of mathematics, together with a very proper notion of his position as an ex-school-house boy and a member of the upper-fifth, had left Rugby for good, and was returning to the land of his birth under the nominal charge of Captain Ladds, who was an old friend of the major's. The early part of the voyage of the _Surat Castle_ was unmarked by any incident worth recording. Stress of weather detained her in the Downs for some few days, but once clear of the Channel she met with favourable winds and (except in the Bay of Biscay) smooth seas, and so made a quick run to the island of Saint Helena, where she anchored off James Town in order to disembark her military passengers and replenish her fresh-water tanks and sea stock. At Saint Helena Tom had the opportunity of enjoying a run ashore and of visiting the empty tomb of the great Napoleon Buonaparte, whose remains had recently been removed from beneath the weeping-willows in Slane's Valley (whither, nineteen years before, they had been carried by the grenadiers of the 66th Regiment) to their honoured resting-place within the walls of the Invalides. But the _Surat Castle_ remained at anchor only a short time, for as soon as the soldiers were clear of the ship, and the fresh provisions and water had been taken on board, Captain Ladds put to sea and shaped his course for Table Bay.