of the best, has always been outside the pale of that sentiment
embracing in a feeling of intimate, equal fellowship the ship and
the man, backing each other against the implacable, if sometimes
dissembled, hostility of their world of waters. The sea--this
truth must be confessed--has no generosity. No display of manly
qualities--courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness--has ever
been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power. The
ocean has the conscienceless temper of a savage autocrat spoiled by
much adulation. He cannot brook the slightest appearance of
defiance, and has remained the irreconcilable enemy of ships and
men ever since ships and men had the unheard of audacity to go
afloat together in the face of his frown. From that day he has
gone on swallowing up fleets and men without his resentment being
glutted by the number of victims--by so many wrecked ships and
wrecked lives. To-day, as ever, he is ready to beguile and betray,
to smash and to drown the incorrigible optimism of men who, backed
by the fidelity of ships, are trying to wrest from him the fortune
of their house, the dominion of their world, or only a dole of food
for their hunger. If not always in the hot mood to smash, he is
always stealthily ready for a drowning. The most amazing wonder of
the deep is its unfathomable cruelty.

I felt its dread for the first time in mid-Atlantic one day, many
years ago, when we took off the crew of a Danish brig homeward
bound from the West Indies. A thin, silvery mist softened the calm
and majestic splendour of light without shadows--seemed to render
the sky less remote and the ocean less immense. It was one of the
days, when the might of the sea appears indeed lovable, like the
nature of a strong man in moments of quiet intimacy. At sunrise we
had made out a black speck to the westward, apparently suspended