Sunk at Sea | Page 2

time to breathe
and recruit for another burst. Had it been otherwise, he would certainly
have suffocated himself in infancy, and this, his veracious biography,
would have remained unwritten!
To creep about the house into dangerous and forbidden places, at the
risk of life and limb, was our hero's chief delight in early childhood. To
fall out of his cradle and crib, to tumble down stairs, and to bruise his
little body until it was black and blue, were among his most ordinary
experiences. Such mishaps never drew tears, however, from his large
blue eyes. After struggling violently to get over the rail of his crib, and
falling heavily on the floor, he was wont to rise with a gasp, and gaze

in bewilderment straight before him, as if he were rediscovering the
law of gravitation. No phrenologist ever conceived half the number of
bumps that were developed on his luckless cranium.
We make no apology to the reader for entering thus minutely into the
character and experiences of a baby. That baby is the hero of our tale.
True, it is as a young man that he is to play his part; but a great
philosopher has told us that he always felt constrained to look upon
children with respect; and a proverb states that, "the child is the father
of the man."
Without either pinning our faith to the philosopher or the proverb, we
think it both appropriate and interesting to note the budding genius of
the wanderer whose footsteps we are about to follow.
Baby Will's mother was a gentle and loving, but weak woman. His
father, William Horace Osten by name, was a large, hearty, affectionate,
but coarse man. He appreciated his wife's gentle, loving nature, but
could not understand her weakness. She admired her husband's manly,
energetic spirit, but could not understand his roughness. He loved the
baby, and resolved to "make a man of him." She loved the baby, and
wished to make him a "good boy." In the furtherance of their designs
the one tried to make him a lion, the other sought to convert him into a
lamb. Which of the two would have succeeded can never be known. It
is probable that both would have failed by counteracting each other, as
is no uncommon experience when fathers and mothers act separately in
such a matter. If the one had succeeded, he would have made him a
bear. The other, if successful, would have made him a nincompoop.
Fortunately for our hero, a higher power saved him, and, by training
him in the school of adversity, made him both a lion and a lamb. The
training was very severe and prolonged, however.
It was long before the lion would consent to lie down in the same breast
with the lamb. Certainly it was not during the season of childhood. The
lion appeared to have it all his own way during that interesting epoch,
and the father was proportionately gratified, while the mother was
dismayed.

Boyhood came, and with it an increased desire to rove, and a more
fervent thirst for adventure. At school our hero obtained the name that
stuck to him through life--"Wandering Will." The seaport town in the
west of England in which he dwelt had been explored by him in all its
ramifications. There was not a retired court, a dark lane, or a blind alley,
with which he was unfamiliar. Every height, crag, cliff, plantation, and
moor within ten miles of his father's mansion had been thoroughly
explored by Will before he was eight years of age, and his aspiring
spirit longed to take a wider flight.
"I want to go to sea, father," said he one evening after tea, looking in
his father's face with much more of the leonine gaze than the father had
bargained for. His training up to that point had been almost too
successful!
This was not the first time that the boy had stated the same wish; his
gaze, therefore, did not quail when his father looked up from his
newspaper and said sternly--"Fiddlesticks, boy! hold your tongue."
"Father," repeated Will, in a tone that caused Mr Osten to lay down his
paper, "I want to go to sea."
"Then the sooner you give up the idea the better, for I won't let you."
"Father," continued Will, "you remember the proverb that you've often
told me has been your motto through life, `Never venture never win?'"
"Certainly; you know that I have often urged you to act on that
principle at school. Why do you ask the question?"
"Because I mean to act on it now, and go to sea," replied Will firmly.
"What? without permission, without clothes, and without money; for
you shan't have a six-pence from me?"
"Yes," replied Will.
Mr Osten