Atlantic Ocean, and he snuffed sea air from the hour of his birth.  At eight years of age he was placed, as cabin-boy, on board a coaster; and from that time down to the moment when he witnessed the marriage ceremony between Mark and Bridget, he had been a sailor.  Throughout the whole war of the revolution Bob had served in the navy, in some vessel or other, and with great good luck, never having been made a prisoner of war.  In connection with this circumstance was one of the besetting weaknesses of his character.  As often happens to men of no very great breadth of views, Bob had a notion that that which he had so successfully escaped, viz. captivity, other men too might have escaped had they been equally as clever.  Thus it was that he had an ill-concealed, or only half-concealed contempt for such seamen as suffered themselves, at any time or under any circumstances, to fall into the enemies’ hands.  On all other subjects Bob was not only rational, but a very discreet and shrewd fellow, though on that he was often harsh, and sometimes absurd.  But the best men have their weakness, and this was Bob Betts’s.

Captain Crutchely had picked up Bob, just after the peace of 1783, and had kept him with him ever since.  It was to Bob that he had committed the instruction of Mark, when the latter first joined the ship, and from Bob the youth had got his earliest notions of seamanship.  In his calling Bob was full of resources, and, as often happens with the American sailor, he was even handy at a great many other things, and particularly so with whatever related to practical mechanics.  Then he was of vast physical force, standing six feet two, in his stockings, and was round-built and solid.  Bob had one sterling quality—­he was as fast a friend as ever existed.  In this respect he was a model of fidelity, never seeing a fault in those he loved, or a good quality in those he disliked.  His attachment to Mark was signal, and he looked on the promotion of the young man much as he would have regarded preferment that befel himself.  In the last voyage he had told the people in the forecastle “That young Mark Woolston would make a thorough sea-dog in time, and now he had got to be Mr. Woolston, he expected great things of him.  The happiest day of my life will be that on which I can ship in a craft commanded by Captain Mark Woolston.  I teached him, myself, how to break the first sea-biscuit he ever tasted, and next day he could do it as well as any on us!  You see how handy and quick he is about a vessel’s decks, shipmates; a ra’al rouser at a weather earin’—­well, when he first come aboard here, and that was little more than two years ago, the smell of tar would almost make him swound away.”  The latter assertion was one of Bob’s embellishments, for Mark was never either lackadaisical or very delicate.  The young man cordially returned Bob’s regard, and the two were sincere friends without any phrases on the subject.