Father came
up to see me off, and was to go down to Gravesend with us. I was his
second boy to go to sea. My big brother was already an officer then. We.
got on board about eleven in the morning, and found the ship ready to
drop out of the basin, stern first. She had not moved three times her
own length when, at a little pluck the tug gave her to enter the dock
gates, she made one of her rampaging starts, and put such a weight on
the check rope--a new six-inch hawser--that forward there they had no
chance to ease it round in time, and it parted. I saw the broken end fly
up high in the air, and the next moment that brute brought her quarter
against the pier-head with a jar that staggered everybody about her
decks. She didn't hurt herself. Not she! But one of the boys the
mate had sent aloft on the mizzen to do something, came down on the
poop-deck--thump--right in front of me. He was not much older than
myself. We had been grinning at each other only a few minutes before. He
must have been handling himself carelessly, not expecting to get such a
jerk.
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