



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Off to Sea, by WHG Kingston.

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OFF TO SEA, BY WHG KINGSTON.

CHAPTER ONE.

MY BIRTH AND EDUCATION.

From my earliest days I have been known as Jovial Jack Junker.  I got
the name, I believe, from always being in good humour, and seeing the
bright side of things.  Whatever I ate did me good, and I never had had
an hour's sickness in my life; while if things happened to go wrong one
day, I knew they would go right the next.  People said I was of a happy
disposition; I suppose I was.  I always felt inclined to be singing or
whistling, and when I did not, it was because I knew I ought to keep
silence--in church, for instance, or in the presence of my elders, who
happened to be engaged in conversation.  Still, I was not born, as the
saying is, with a silver spoon in my mouth, nor did I possess any great
worldly advantages.  I did not trouble myself much about the future, I
must confess that.  If I got what I wanted, I was contented; if not, I
expected to get it the next day or the day after.  I could wait; I
always found something to amuse me in the meantime.  My father was a
marine--a man well known to fame, though not the celebrated "Cheeks."
He was known as Sergeant Junker.  He had several small sons and
daughters--young Junkers--and when I was about twelve years of age, he
was left an inconsolable widower by the untimely death of our
inestimable mother.  She was an excellent woman, and had brought us up,
to the best of her ability, in a way to make us good and useful members
of society.  She was indeed a greater loss to us than to our poor
father; for, as my elder brother Simon observed, as he rubbed his eyes,
moist with tears, with the back of his hand--

"You see, Jack, father can go and get another wife, as many do; but we
can't get another mother like her that is gone, that we can't, nohow."

No more thorough testimony could have been given to the virtues of our
mother.  She was a superior woman in many respects, and she was of a
very respectable family, and had a nice little fortune of her own; but
she had the common weakness of her sex, and fell in love with the
handsome face of our honest, worthy father, Ben Junker the marine, at
the time a private in that noble corps.  She did not like his name, but
she loved him, and overcame her prejudice.  He could, at the period I
speak of, scarcely read or write; but she set to work to educate him,
and so far succeeded, that, being a very steady man, he rose in due
course to be a sergeant.  She had the ambition of hoping to see him
obtain a commission; but he used to declare that, if he did, nothing
would make him more unhappy, as he should feel exactly like a fish out
of water.  He was thus, at the time of which I am speaking, still a
sergeant.  Our mother, in consequence of the income she enjoyed, was
able to give her children a much better education than we should
otherwise probably have obtained.  At the time of her death, it would
have been difficult to find in our rank of life a more happy, contented,
and better-conducted family.  Our father, as I have said, was at first
inconsolable; but he was of a happy, contented disposition, as it is
very necessary that marines, as well as other people, should be--a
disposition which I fortunately inherited from him.  He took the rough
with the smooth in life, as a matter of course.  A favourite song of
his, which he used to hum, was--

  "What's the use of sighing,
  While time is on the wing?
  Oh! what's the use of crying?
  Then merrily, merrily sing
  Fa! la!"

Consequently, as Simon said he knew he would, he began in a short time
to look out for another wife; and, unhappily for us, fixed on a widow
with a family.  She was, however, a very amiable woman; in fact, her
great fault was, that she was too amiable, too soft and yielding.  She
could not manage to rule her own family, and a most uproarious, mutinous
set they were.  From the time they came to the house there was no peace
or quiet for anyone else.  They, indeed, soon took to try and rule over
us with a high hand.  Her girls used to come it over our girls, and her
boys over our boys.  Brother Simon, who was bigger and stronger than her
eldest, more than once threatened that he would thrash them all round,
if they had any more nonsense, and that invariably made our poor
stepmother burst into tears, and plead so hard for her rebellious
offspring, that the good, honest fellow had not the heart to put his
threat into execution.  At last some of us could stand it no longer.  As
Simon was old enough, he went one day, without saying anything to
anybody, and enlisted in the marines.  Bill, our second brother, got our
father to apprentice him to a ship-carpenter; and, after no little
trouble and coaxing, he promised to let me go on board a man-of-war.  He
did so, however, very unwillingly.

"You don't know the sort of life that you will have to lead aboard ship,
Jack," he observed.  "Boys afloat are not the happy-go-lucky sort of
chaps they seem on shore, let me tell you; but, to be sure, they have
got discipline there, which is more than I can say there is to be found
in a certain place that you know of."  And my father uttered a deep
sigh.

We were walking, one evening after tea, up and down our bit of a garden,
while he smoked his pipe.  He was allowed to live out of barracks, and
we had a small cottage a little way off.

"I don't know, Jack, but what I should not be sorry, if my company was
ordered on service afloat," he observed, confidentially, after a
minute's silence.  "Your new mother is a good woman--a very good woman;
about her I made no mistake, though she is not equal, by a long chalk,
to her that's gone; but oh!  Jack," and he sighed again, "I did not take
into account those young cubs of hers.  They will not rest till they
have driven your sisters out of the house, as they have driven the