Chapter 1
_ CHAPTER ONE
My father, Richard Truscott, was boatswain of the _Royal George_, one of the finest ships in the navy. I lived with mother and several brothers and sisters at Gosport.
Father one day said to me, "Ben, you shall come with me, and we‘ll make a sailor of you. Maybe you‘ll some day walk the quarter-deck as an officer."
I did not want to go to sea, and I did not care about being an officer； indeed I had never thought about the matter, but I had no choice in it. I was but a very little chap, and liked playing at marbles, or "chuck penny," in our backyard, better than anything else.
"He is too small yet to be a sailor," said mother.
"He is big enough to be a powder-monkey," observed my father； and as he was not a man who chose to be contradicted, he the next day took me aboard his ship, then fitting out in Portsmouth harbour, to carry the flag of Admiral Sir Edward Hawke. She was indeed a proud ship, with the tautest masts and the squarest yards of

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