And the story of Sussex told.

I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.




A CASUAL OF THE SEA

He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.

--GEORGE HERBERT.


Books sometimes make surprising connections with life. Fifteen-year-old
Tommy Jonkers, shipping as O.S. (ordinary seaman) on the S.S.
_Fernfield_ in Glasgow in 1911, could hardly have suspected that the
second engineer would write a novel and put him in it; or that that same
novel would one day lift him out of focsle and galley and set him
working for a publishing house on far-away Long Island. Is it not one
more proof of the surprising power of the written word?

For Tommy is not one of those who expect to find their names in print.
The mere sight of his name on a newspaper page, in an article I wrote
about him, brought (so he naïvely told me) tears to his eyes. Excellent,
simple-hearted Tommy! How little did you think, when you signed on to
help the _Fernfield_ carry coal from Glasgow to Alexandria, that the