 Nobody could tell positively what occupation _his_ father had followed; but my dear mother used to assert that he had been a midshipman, whose grandfather, on the mother's side, had been an admiral in the Royal Navy.  At any rate, we knew that as far back as our family could be traced, it had been intimately connected with the great watery waste.  Indeed, this was the case on both sides of the house; for my mother always went to sea with my father on his long voyages, and so spent the greater part of her life upon the water.