Sailors visit many fine countries; but there is none—not the very finest—that delights them more than the coast of their own native land when they sight it after a long voyage. The ship was the Royal Brunswicker. I was her first mate. The name of her master was Spalding; mine William Fielding. Captain Spalding had married a relative of my mother’s. He was a north-countryman, and had sailed for many years from the Tyne and from the Wear; but two years before the date of this story—that is to say, in the middle of the year 1812—he had been offered the command of the Royal Brunswicker, a small, cozy, lubberly, full-rigged ship of 490 tons, belonging to the Port of London. I was stopping at Deal with my uncle at that time, and heard that Captain Spalding—but I forget how the news of such a thing reached me at Deal—was in want of a second mate. I applied for the post, and, on the merits of my relationship with the captain’s wife, to say no more, I obtained the appointment.

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