Although you feel you would probably enjoy the printing business more than a career as a soap maker, you wish to remain free to take advantage of some other opportunity.

The work with Uncle Ted is tedious. You feel you could not bear life devoted to making candles and soap. You spend most of your spare time reading what books you can lay hold of, but you are anxious to travel and see the world.

Not long afterwards, you sign up on the brigan-tine, Nina, as a deck hand. The ship is owned by a rich merchant, and it is bound for Barbados in the West Indies with a load of lumber and then on to England.

You find life at sea much harder than you expected, especially when you are required to climb the rigging in a howling gale, but eventually you become captain of your own ship. In every place you visit you ask the people you meet whether they have ever heard of the Cave of Time.