by another, has succeeded in daunting him.  He has remained immovable in the midst of an appalling explosion which reduced a ship’s company to a heap of toe-nails.  And now, his mind fired by the crash of conflict and the intoxication of almost universal slaughter, he proposes to show the world how a naval novel that means to be accurate as well as vivid, to be bought by the public in thousands as well as to teach useful lessons to politicians and sailors, ought really to be written. Mr. Punch may as well state that he has not submitted this story to any naval experts.  His facts speak for themselves, and require no merely professional approval to enhance their value.]

WHO’D BE A SAILOR?

(A Story of Blood and Battle.)

CHAPTER I.

[Illustration:  The Explosion.]

Listen, my Grandchildren! for you are mine, not indeed by the ridiculous accident of birth (since to speak the truth I am an unmarried old sea-dog), but by the far higher and more honourable title of having been selected by me to hear this yarn.  You know well enough that such a tale must be told to grandchildren, and since you undoubtedly possessed grandparents, and have been hired at a shilling an hour to listen to me, I have every right to address you as I did.  Therefore I say, my grandchildren, attend to what I am about to relate.  You who live under the beneficent sway of the mighty Australo-Canado-Africo-Celto-Americo-Anglian Federation of Commonwealths, can have no notion of the degraded conditions under which I, your grandfather, and the rest of my miserable fellow-countrymen lived fifty years ago in the year 1892.  Naturally you have read no books of history referring to any date anterior to 1902.  The wretched records of ignorance, slavery and decrepitude have been justly expunged from your curriculum.  Let me tell you then that a little country calling itself the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland at that time arrogated to itself the leadership of the mighty countries which you now call your home.  You smile and refer me to a large-sized map on which, as you justly observe, this country occupies a space of not more than two square inches.  Your surprise is intelligible, but the melancholy fact remains.  All this has now been happily changed, and changed too in consequence of a war in which England (for so the country was often inaccurately called, except upon Scotch political platforms, where people naturally objected to the name) in which, as I say, England bore the chief part and obtained the decisive victory.  The story of this war I am now about to relate to you.

CHAPTER II.