It was, therefore, a melancholy sound, the first request of that heroic boy, when he became fourteen—a sorrowful note in the ears of his doting parents—that he might become a sailor, and leave them! The father and mother exchanged a dreary look, and said nought. It was a request they might expect, one day or other, for the lad had always raved about the darling life of a sailor, and he was now becoming of an age when it was fit he should enter on such a profession as he intended to follow for life: but yet they had always put the thought aside, and clung to the enjoyment of possessing such a son, and beholding him as "the light of their eyes," daily. Tom saw and felt what his parents endured when he presented his first request, and he did not renew it till another month had flown, and a Boston sloop was lying off the cockle-sands, laden with timber from Hull, when he again asked if he might go for a sailor. This time, however, the question was put under circumstances which seemed to soften the dread of separation. Boston was a Lincolnshire port, and a voyage thither and back, on trial, would soon be performed, so that they would soon see their darling again; and therefore his parents gave consent for Tom's departure. The boy became as much the darling of the little crew in the sloop, during their brief voyage, as he had been of his father and mother. They gave him the name which stuck to him through life, as soon as they had heard his history, to which, indeed, they were scarcely strangers, for it was not the first time he had been on board their shallop. And "Cockle Tom" was proud to tell his new name when he saw his home again: it had been given him by sailors, and it was, therefore, more honourable in his estimation than knighthood or nobility given by a monarch would have been, had he known of either. There was now no putting off the complete separation from their noblest child for Tom's parents. He had fully made up his mind to live on the sea, his darling element: and, besides, he had been to Hull, the port to which the Boston sloop traded, and had seen the Greenland whale-ships, and talked with the sailors till he was all excitement for the noble daring of joining in an attack upon the vast sea-monsters, and seeing the mountain icebergs, and hearing the roaring of the white bears. His father therefore prepared clothing for the lad, and began to think of setting out with him for Hull, in order to see him safely committed, as a sailor-apprentice, to the care of some kind and fatherly sort of Greenland captain.