He was thirty-two years of age and he had used the sea since twelve - twenty years. His past was a long succession of fo'c'sles, bar-rooms, blazing suns, storms and sea happen ings so run together that all sequence was lost. Beyond them lay a dismal blotch, his childhood. He had entered the world and literally and figuratively had been laid at the door of a work house; of his childhood he remembered little, of his parentage he knew nothing. In drink he was quiet, but most dangerous under certain provocations.It was as though deep in his being lay a blazing hatred born of injustice through ages and only coming to light when upborne by balloon-juice.