I had been in the water about an hour, and cold, exhausted, with aterrible cramp in my right calf, it seemed as though my hour had come.Fruitlessly struggling against the strong ebb tide, I had beheld themaddening procession of the water-front lights slip by, but now I gaveup attempting to breast the stream and contented myself with the bitterthoughts of a wasted career, now drawing to a close.It had been my luck to come of good, English stock, but of parents whoseaccount with the bankers far exceeded their knowledge of child-natureand the rearing of children. While born with a silver spoon in my mouth,the blessed atmosphere of the home circle was to me unknown. My father,a very learned man and a celebrated antiquarian, gave no thought to hisfamily, being constantly lost in the abstractions of his study; while mymother, noted far more for her good looks than her good sense, satedherself with the adulation of the society in which she was perpetuallyplunged. I went through the regular school and college routine of a boyof the English bourgeoisie, and as the years brought me increasingstrength and passions, my parents suddenly became aware that I waspossessed of an immortal soul, and endeavoured to draw the curb. But itwas too late; I perpetrated the wildest and most audacious folly, andwas disowned by my people, ostracised by the society I had so longoutraged, and with the thousand pounds my father gave me, with thedeclaration that he would neither see me again nor give me more, I tooka first-class passage to Australia.Since then my life had been one long peregrination--from the Orient tothe Occident, from the Arctic to the Antarctic--to find myself at last,an able seaman at thirty, in the full vigour of my manhood, drowning inSan Francisco Bay because of a disastrously successful attempt to desertmy ship.