sight as the owner of a little five-ton cutter, which he sailed alone
apparently, a fellow yachtsman in the unpretending band of fanatics who
cruise at the mouth of the Thames. But the first time he addressed the
waiter sharply as 'steward' we knew him at once for a sailor as well as a
yachtsman.

Presently he had occasion to reprove that same waiter for the slovenly
manner in which the dinner was served. He did it with considerable
energy and then turned to us.

"If we at sea," he declared, "went about our work as people ashore high
and low go about theirs we should never make a living. No one would
employ us. And moreover no ship navigated and sailed in the happy-go-
lucky manner people conduct their business on shore would ever arrive
into port."

Since he had retired from the sea he had been astonished to discover that
the educated people were not much better than the others. No one seemed
to take any proper pride in his work: from plumbers who were simply
thieves to, say, newspaper men (he seemed to think them a specially
intellectual class) who never by any chance gave a correct version of the
simplest affair. This universal inefficiency of what he called "the
shore gang" he ascribed in general to the want of responsibility and to a
sense of security.

"They see," he went on, "that no matter what they do this tight little
island won't turn turtle with them or spring a leak and go to the bottom
with their wives and children."

From this point the conversation took a special turn relating exclusively