[Illustration: Captain James Cook.]
Four years after Cook had joined the navy, he was master on the
_Mercury_ with the fleet before Quebec, making a chart of the St.
Lawrence for Wolfe to take the troops up to the Heights of Abraham,
piloting the boats to the attack on Montmorency, and conducting the
embarkation of the troops, who were to win the famous battle, that
changed the face of America.
Now the Royal Society wished to send some one to the South Seas, whose
reliability was of such a recognized and steady-going sort, that his
conclusions would be accepted by the public. Just twenty years from
the time that he had left the shop, Cook was chosen for this important
mission. What manner of man was he, who in that time had risen from
life in a mud hut to the rank of a commander in the Royal Navy? In
manner, he was plain and simple and direct, no flourish, no unnecessary
palaver of showy words, not a word he did not mean. In form, he was
six feet tall, in perfect proportion, with brown hair and eyes, alertly
penetrating, with features sharp rather from habit or thought than from
natural shape.
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