Off to Sea

Chapter One.
My Birth and Education.

From my earliest days I have been known as Jovial Jack Junker. I got the name,I believe, from always being in good humour, and seeing the bright side ofthings. Whatever I ate did me good, and I never had had an hour’ssickness in my life; while if things happened to go wrong one day, I knew theywould go right the next. People said I was of a happy disposition; I suppose Iwas. I always felt inclined to be singing or whistling, and when I did not, itwas because I knew I ought to keep silence—in church, for instance, or inthe presence of my elders, who happened to be engaged in conversation. Still, Iwas not born, as the saying is, with a silver spoon in my mouth, nor did Ipossess any great worldly advantages. I did not trouble myself much about thefuture, I must confess that. If I got what I wanted, I was contented; if not, Iexpected to get it the next day or the day after. I could wait; I always foundsomething to amuse me in the meantime. My father was a marine—a man wellknown to fame, though not the celebrated “Cheeks.” He was known asSergeant Junker. He had several small sons and daughters—youngJunkers—and when I was about twelve years of age, he was left aninconsolable widower by the untimely death of our inestimable mother. She wasan excellent woman, and had brought us up, to the best of her ability, in a wayto make us good and useful members of society. She was indeed a greater loss tous than to our poor father; for, as my elder brother Simon observed, as herubbed his eyes, moist with tears, with the back of his hand—

“You see, Jack, father can go and get another wife, as many do; but wecan’t get another mother like her that is gone, that we can’t,nohow.”

No more thorough testimony could have been given to the virtues of our mother.She was a superior woman in many respects, and she was of a very respectablefamily, and had a nice little fortune of her own; but she had the commonweakness of her sex, and fell in love with the handsome face of our honest,worthy father, Ben Junker the marine, at the time a private in that noblecorps. She did not like his name, but she loved him, and overcame herprejudice. He could, at the per

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