ships swing cruel hooks at the end of long chains. Gangs of dock-
labourers swarm with muddy feet over the gangways. It is a moving
sight this, of so many men of the earth, earthy, who never cared
anything for a ship, trampling unconcerned, brutal and hob-nailed
upon her helpless body.

Fortunately, nothing can deface the beauty of a ship. That sense
of a dungeon, that sense of a horrible and degrading misfortune
overtaking a creature fair to see and safe to trust, attaches only
to ships moored in the docks of great European ports. You feel
that they are dishonestly locked up, to be hunted about from wharf
to wharf on a dark, greasy, square pool of black water as a brutal
reward at the end of a faithful voyage.

A ship anchored in an open roadstead, with cargo-lighters alongside
and her own tackle swinging the burden over the rail, is
accomplishing in freedom a function of her life. There is no
restraint; there is space: clear water around her, and a clear sky
above her mastheads, with a landscape of green hills and charming
bays opening around her anchorage. She is not abandoned by her own
men to the tender mercies of shore people. She still shelters, and
is looked after by, her own little devoted band, and you feel that
presently she will glide between the headlands and disappear. It
is only at home, in dock, that she lies abandoned, shut off from
freedom by all the artifices of men that think of quick despatch
and profitable freights. It is only then that the odious,
rectangular shadows of walls and roofs fall upon her decks, with
showers of soot.

To a man who has never seen the extraordinary nobility, strength,