The word "impossible" was not in his vocabulary. He simply did
not recognize any limitations to what a man _might_ do, could do, would
do, if he tried; and that means, that under stress of risk or
temptation, or opposition, a man's caution goes to the winds. With
Cook, it was risk that caused ruin. With the Czar of Russia, it was
temptation.
Born at Marton, a small parish of a north riding in the county of York,
October 27, 1728, James Cook was the son of a day-laborer in an age
when manual toil was paid at the rate of a few pennies a day. There
were nine of a family. The home was a thatch-roofed mud cottage. Two
years after Cook's birth, the father was appointed bailiff, which
slightly improved family finances; but James was thirteen years of age
before it was possible to send him to school. There, the progress of
his learning was a gallop. He had a wizard-genius for figures. In
three short years he had mastered all the Ayton school could teach him.
At sixteen, his schooling was over. The father's highest ambition
seems to have been for the son to become a successful shopkeeper in one
of the small towns.
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