Page:A Mainsail Haul - Masefield - 1913.djvu/98

86 manly resolution of sea-faring men." When he was a boy he shipped himself to sea, to scrub the cans in the galley, to say his compass to the boatswain, and to be whipped at the capstan every Monday morning, so that his ship might have a fair wind. When he grew older, he took his share in the work aloft, and learned how to point and parcel, how to hold his own in a forecastle, and how to load and fire a great gun. "I grew," he says, "to beare the name of a skilful marriner.... I grew ambitious straight, to have a whole