in the common course of human affairs, but more as if by enchantment. I
ought to have been lost in astonishment. But I wasn't. I was very much
like people in fairy tales. Nothing ever astonishes them. When a fully
appointed gala coach is produced out of a pumpkin to take her to a ball,
Cinderella does not exclaim. She gets in quietly and drives away to her
high fortune.

Captain Ellis (a fierce sort of fairy) had produced a command out of a
drawer almost as unexpectedly as in a fairy tale. But a command is an
abstract idea, and it seemed a sort of "lesser marvel" till it flashed
upon me that it involved the concrete existence of a ship.

A ship! My ship! She was mine, more absolutely mine for possession
and care than anything in the world; an object of responsibility and
devotion. She was there waiting for me, spell-bound, unable to move,
to live, to get out into the world (till I came), like an enchanted
princess. Her call had come to me as if from the clouds. I had never
suspected her existence. I didn't know how she looked, I had barely
heard her name, and yet we were indissolubly united for a certain
portion of our future, to sink or swim together!

A sudden passion of anxious impatience rushed through my veins, gave me
such a sense of the intensity of existence as I have never felt before
or since. I discovered how much of a seaman I was, in heart, in mind,
and, as it were, physically--a man exclusively of sea and ships; the sea
the only world that counted, and the ships, the test of manliness, of
temperament, of courage and fidelity-and of love.

I had an exquisite moment. It was unique also. Jumping up from my seat,
I paced up and down my room for a long time. But when I came downstairs