strength, strength--the jealous, sleepless strength of a man
guarding a coveted treasure within his gates.



XXXVII.



The cradle of oversea traffic and of the art of naval combats, the
Mediterranean, apart from all the associations of adventure and
glory, the common heritage of all mankind, makes a tender appeal to
a seaman. It has sheltered the infancy of his craft. He looks
upon it as a man may look at a vast nursery in an old, old mansion
where innumerable generations of his own people have learned to
walk. I say his own people because, in a sense, all sailors belong
to one family: all are descended from that adventurous and shaggy
ancestor who, bestriding a shapeless log and paddling with a
crooked branch, accomplished the first coasting-trip in a sheltered
bay ringing with the admiring howls of his tribe. It is a matter
of regret that all those brothers in craft and feeling, whose
generations have learned to walk a ship's deck in that nursery,
have been also more than once fiercely engaged in cutting each
other's throats there. But life, apparently, has such exigencies.
Without human propensity to murder and other sorts of
unrighteousness there would have been no historical heroism. It is
a consoling reflection. And then, if one examines impartially the
deeds of violence, they appear of but small consequence. From
Salamis to Actium, through Lepanto and the Nile to the naval
massacre of Navarino, not to mention other armed encounters of