rigging.

This was my first ghost. Once again have I seen a ghost. It proved to
be a Newfoundland dog, and I don't know which of us was the more
frightened, for I hit that Newfoundland a full right-arm swing to the
jaw. Regarding the Bricklayer's ghost, I will say that I never mentioned
it to a soul on board. Also, I will say that in all my life I never went
through more torment and mental suffering than on that lonely night-watch
on the _Sophie Sutherland_.

(TO THE EDITOR.--This is not a fiction. It is a true page out of my
life.)




A CLASSIC OF THE SEA


Introduction to "_Two Years before the Mast_."

Once in a hundred years is a book written that lives not alone for its
own century but which becomes a document for the future centuries. Such
a book is Dana's. When Marryat's and Cooper's sea novels are gone to
dust, stimulating and joyful as they have been to generations of men,
still will remain "Two Years Before the Mast."

Paradoxical as it may seem, Dana's book is the classic of the sea, not
because there was anything extraordinary about Dana, but for the precise
contrary reason that he was just an ordinary, normal man, clear-seeing,