A ship is not a slave. You must make her easy in a seaway, you
must never forget that you owe her the fullest share of your
thought, of your skill, of your self-love. If you remember that
obligation, naturally and without effort, as if it were an
instinctive feeling of your inner life, she will sail, stay, run
for you as long as she is able, or, like a sea-bird going to rest
upon the angry waves, she will lay out the heaviest gale that ever
made you doubt living long enough to see another sunrise.



XVI.



Often I turn with melancholy eagerness to the space reserved in the
newspapers under the general heading of "Shipping Intelligence." I
meet there the names of ships I have known. Every year some of
these names disappear--the names of old friends. "Tempi passati!"

The different divisions of that kind of news are set down in their
order, which varies but slightly in its arrangement of concise
headlines. And first comes "Speakings"--reports of ships met and
signalled at sea, name, port, where from, where bound for, so many
days out, ending frequently with the words "All well." Then come
"Wrecks and Casualties"--a longish array of paragraphs, unless the
weather has been fair and clear, and friendly to ships all over the
world.