The boy had never seen an action. But he had rejoiced with the rest at America's many victories; he had joined with the crowd that had followed the parading sailors in New York after Hull's great victory, and he had peeped in at the window of the hotel upon the occasion of the dinner given to Decatur and to Bainbridge and to the _Guerrière's_ conqueror--all this while on a visit to the city from his home in the mountains of New Jersey. And thus inflamed with the idea, he had run away to sea, and had made his first voyage, eight or ten months previous to the opening of the story, in a little privateer that had an uneventful cruise and returned to port after taking two small prizes that had offered no resistance. His entering on board the _Constitution_ had been with the permission of his parents, who saw that the only way to hold him from following his bent would be to keep him at home forever under their watchful eyes. A great war-ship is a small floating world, and, like the world, the dangers that beset a young man starting alone on his career are many. There are the good and the bad, the leaders and the led; the people who lift up others, and those who lean. It was rather well for the boy that he had met with old Renwick and conceived a friendship for him. From the old sailor the lad had learned much. He was an expert at tying knots already, and he had learned to hand, reef, and steer after a fashion on board the privateer schooner. The royal yards on a man-of-war are always manned by boys, because of their agility and lightness. This boy was a born topman; he exulted in the sense of freedom that comes to one when laying out upon a swaying yard; the bounding exhilaration of the heart, the exciting quickening of the pulse as the great mass describes arcs of huge circles as the vessel far below swings and rises through the seas. The attention of the officers had been called to him more than once, and if there was a ticklish job aloft above the cross-trees, the boy was sent to perform it. On one occasion he had excited a reprimand for riding down a backstay head foremost, the First Lieutenant observing, and speaking to him thus: "While that would do for a circus, it wasn't the thing for shipboard." But he was a perfect monkey with the ropes, and nothing delighted him better than scampering up the shrouds, or shinning to the main truck to disengage the pennant halliards. He used to sing, in his shrill, high voice, even when struggling to get in the stiffened canvas in a gale.