Poor man! He was never to have the
opportunity of gratifying an ignoble desire, for the night
after the vessel's arrival the youthful incorrigible
disembarked with a vow that he would never return to her
again; and he kept his word. Could those fields and lanes in
Scotland speak out the thoughts and the sufferings of the
days that were spent there, what an ineffable record of woe
they would lay bare!
Tramping by night, and concealed part of the way by day,
this child of respectable parents was driven by cruel wrong
to abandon himself to the privations of hunger, the rigour
of a biting climate, and to the chance of his strength
giving way before he had reached the destination that was to
open out newer and brighter opportunities to him. Four weeks
after deserting his vessel he landed at a large seaport on
the north-east coast of England, and then began a new era.
For many years he led a chequered and eventful life, which,
however, did not prevent him from rising quickly to the head
of his profession. Before he was twenty-two years of age he
was given the command of a handsome sailing vessel, and at
twenty-six he commanded a steamer.
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