The first approach to the land, as yet invisible to the crew's
eyes, is announced by the brisk order of the chief mate to the
boatswain: "We will get the anchors over this afternoon" or "first
thing to-morrow morning," as the case may be. For the chief mate
is the keeper of the ship's anchors and the guardian of her cable.
There are good ships and bad ships, comfortable ships and ships
where, from first day to last of the voyage, there is no rest for a
chief mate's body and soul. And ships are what men make them:
this is a pronouncement of sailor wisdom, and, no doubt, in the
main it is true.

However, there are ships where, as an old grizzled mate once told
me, "nothing ever seems to go right!" And, looking from the poop
where we both stood (I had paid him a neighbourly call in dock), he
added: "She's one of them." He glanced up at my face, which
expressed a proper professional sympathy, and set me right in my
natural surmise: "Oh no; the old man's right enough. He never
interferes. Anything that's done in a seamanlike way is good
enough for him. And yet, somehow, nothing ever seems to go right
in this ship. I tell you what: she is naturally unhandy."

The "old man," of course, was his captain, who just then came on
deck in a silk hat and brown overcoat, and, with a civil nod to us,
went ashore. He was certainly not more than thirty, and the
elderly mate, with a murmur to me of "That's my old man," proceeded
to give instances of the natural unhandiness of the ship in a sort
of deprecatory tone, as if to say, "You mustn't think I bear a
grudge against her for that."

The instances do not matter. The point is that there are ships