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Rh dissuasion by carefully concealing the extent of his plans. It was on the 19th of July, 1822, that he embarked in a schooner lying in the London Docks, and bound to St. Petersburg, with the ostensible motive of visiting the Russian empire; but with the real one, as he says, "if circumstances should permit, of making a circuit of the whole world." The schooner had not left the river Thames before he was enabled to give a striking proof of that readiness in using his other faculties, which went so far to compensate him for his affliction. It happened that the vessel was run into by a heavily-laden collier, and seriously damaged. During the confusion which attended the accident, Holman rushed from his berth to the helm, from which the steersman had fled, and at once made himself useful by complying promptly with the captain's rapidly-succeeding orders of "starboard" and "port." The captain, however, was entirely ignorant of the fact of his having a blind steersman until the trouble was over, and he observed, for the first time, that the man at the helm was a stranger standing in his night-shirt; but he became so well satisfied with the nautical skill of the volunteer seaman, as afterwards to permit him to steer the vessel in a fresh breeze.

When at sea, Holman had plenty of time to consider his plans, and the motives which determined him to pursue them in spite of his blindness. He knew well that the extraordinary delicacy of the sense of touch and hearing, and the quickness in drawing inferences common to the intelligent blind, enabled him to acquire ideas and gather information with far greater certainty than was commonly supposed to be possible.