ON THE OCEAN WAVE 67 



amusing spectacle all of us naked as we were born. 

 That ended the examination, and we were pronounced 

 fit to serve the Queen. 



The first clear impression I have retained of that 

 inaugural moment of being alone in the world is that 

 of two small boys in the same uniform as myself the 

 one a wizened little person like a marmoset monkey, 

 the other a lean, long-legged lad with light hair and 

 the face of an ostrich standing laughing at me on the 

 other side of the deck, as I turned from the gangway, 

 over which my father had just disappeared. I suppose 

 the eyeglass in my eye gave me a conceited air, and 

 certainly it was not a usual appendage for a child of 

 thirteen ; but as I had worn it for the last four years 

 I was quite unconscious that it struck any one as 

 comical. 



I can distinctly call to mind how dazed and con- 

 fused I felt as I looked about me, for I had never 

 seen a ship of war before, and had not the least 

 conception of what it would be like. I look back on 

 it now, and a picture rises up of confused sights and 

 sounds : broad white decks and rows of guns ; masts 

 and rigging ; big funnels belching out smoke ; men 

 tramping about ; bugle calls ; officers in a medley of 

 stripes and different uniforms ; marines, of whose very 

 existence I was up to that time ignorant ; movement 

 everywhere, people rushing up and down ladders 

 apparently bent on nothing in particular. I see myself, 

 a half -blind mite of a boy, suddenly swept into the grip 

 of this extraordinary machine, a mere speck, as it 

 were, amongst these hundreds of men, listening to a 

 jargon consisting chiefly of oaths of a sort I had never 

 heard. 



