Ah, my boy (said Ben), you are there with your soundings, are you? Well, you shall have a long story by the shortest tack. Somebody was my father (continued he), but whom I know not. This much I know about my mother: she was cook in a gentleman's family in this county, and being a fat, portly body--something of the build of her son, I take it--no one suspected that she was in a certain delicate situation, until within a few days before I was born. Then, with very grief and shame, the poor thing became delirious; and, as an old servant of the family has since told me, you could see the very flesh melting off her bones. While she continued in a state of delirium, your humble servant, poor Benjamin, was born; and without recovering her senses, she died within an hour after my birth, leaving me--a beautiful orphan, as you see me now--a legacy to the workhouse and the world. Benjamin was my mother's family name--from which I suppose they had something of the Jew in their blood; though, Heaven knows, I have none in my composition. So they who had the christening of me gave me my mother's name of Benjamin, as my Christian name: and from her occupation as _cook_, they surnamed me Cookson--that is, "Benjamin the Cook's son," simply Benjamin Cookson, more simply, Squire Ben. Well, you see, my boy, I was born beneath the roof of an English squire, and before I was three hours old was handed over to the workhouse. This was the beginning of my life. The first thing I remember was hating the workhouse--the second was loving the sea. Yes, sir, before I was seven years old, I used to steal away in the noble company of my own good self, and sit down upon a rock on the solitary beach, watching the ships, the waves, and the sea-birds--wishing to be a wave, a ship, or a bird--ay, sir, wishing to be anything but poor orphan Ben. The sea was to me what my parents should have been--a thing I delighted to look upon. I loved the very music of its maddest storms; though, quietly, I have since had enough of them. I began my career before I was ten years of age, as cabin-boy in a collier. My skipper was a dare-devil, tear-away sort of fellow, who cared no more for running down one of your coasting craft than for turning a quid in his mouth. But he was a good, honest, kindhearted sort of a chap, for all that--barring that the rope's-end was too often in his hand.