“But I have heard of one, some years ago.  He seems to have been a boy serving his time on board a Liverpool ship, if I am not mistaken.”

“What was his name?”

I told him.

“How did you say that?” he asked, puckering up his eyes at the uncouth sound.

I repeated the name very distinctly.

“How do you spell it?”

I told him.  He moved his head at the impracticable nature of that name, and observed: 

“It’s quite as long as your own—­isn’t it?”

There was no hurry.  I had passed for Master, and I had all the rest of my life before me to make the best of it.  That seemed a long time.  I went leisurely through a small mental calculation, and said: 

“Not quite.  Shorter by two letters, sir.”

“Is it?” The examiner pushed the signed blue slip across the table to me, and rose from his chair.  Somehow this seemed a very abrupt ending of our relations, and I felt almost sorry to part from that excellent man, who was master of a ship before the whisper of the sea had reached my cradle.  He offered me his hand and wished me well.  He even made a few steps towards the door with me, and ended with good-natured advice.

“I don’t know what may be your plans but you ought to go into steam.  When a man has got his master’s certificate it’s the proper time.  If I were you I would go into steam.”

I thanked him, and shut the door behind me definitely on the era of examinations.  But that time I did not walk on air, as on the first two occasions.  I walked across the Hill of many beheadings with measured steps.  It was a fact, I said to myself, that I was now a British master mariner beyond a doubt.  It was not that I had an exaggerated sense of that very modest achievement, with which, however, luck, opportunity, or any extraneous influence could have had nothing to do.  That fact, satisfactory and obscure in itself, had for me a certain ideal significance.  It was an answer to certain outspoken scepticism, and even to some not very kind aspersions.  I had vindicated myself from what had been cried upon as a stupid obstinacy or a fantastic caprice.  I don’t mean to say that a whole country had been convulsed by my desire to go to sea.  But for a boy between fifteen and sixteen, sensitive enough, in all conscience, the commotion of his little world had seemed a very considerable thing indeed.  So considerable that, absurdly enough, the echoes of it linger to this day.  I catch myself in hours of solitude and retrospect meeting arguments and charges made thirty-five years ago by voices now for ever still; finding things to say that an assailed boy could not have found, simply because of the mysteriousness of his impulses to himself.  I understood no more than the people who called upon me to explain myself.  There was no precedent.  I verily believe mine was the only case of a boy of my nationality and antecedents taking a, so to speak,