I must have ill luck indeed, if I lit upon a captain more cruel than Mr.Crayshaw.I did not know exactly how it was to be accomplished, but I knew enough to know that I could not aim at the Royal Navy.

Of course I should have preferred it.

I had never seen naval officers, but if they were like officers in the army, like Colonel Jervois, for instance, it was with such a port and bearing that I would fain have carried myself when I grew up to be a man.

I guessed, however, that money and many other considerations might make it impossible for me to be a midshipman; but I had heard of boys being apprenticed to merchant-vessels, and I resolved to ask my father if he would so apprentice me.
He refused, and he accompanied his refusal with an unfavourable commentary on my character and conduct, which was not the less bitter because the accusations were chiefly general.
This sudden fancy for the sea--well, if it were not a sudden fancy, but a dream of my life, what a painful instance it afforded of my habitual want of frankness!--This long-concealed project which I had suddenly brought to the surface--I had talked about it to my mother years ago, had I, but it had distressed her, and even to my father, but he had snubbed me ?--then I had been deliberately fostering aims and plans to which I had always known that my parents would be opposed.

My father didn't believe a word of it.