The children found each other out like dogs, and ran about the
decks scraping acquaintance after their fashion also. 'What do you
call your mither?' I heard one ask. 'Mawmaw,' was the reply,
indicating, I fancy, a shade of difference in the social scale.
When people pass each other on the high seas of life at so early an
age, the contact is but slight, and the relation more like what we
may imagine to be the friendship of flies than that of men; it is
so quickly joined, so easily dissolved, so open in its
communications and so devoid of deeper human qualities. The
children, I observed, were all in a band, and as thick as thieves
at a fair, while their elders were still ceremoniously manoeuvring
on the outskirts of acquaintance. The sea, the ship, and the
seamen were soon as familiar as home to these half-conscious little
ones. It was odd to hear them, throughout the voyage, employ shore
words to designate portions of the vessel. 'Go 'way doon to yon
dyke,' I heard one say, probably meaning the bulwark. I often had
my heart in my mouth, watching them climb into the shrouds or on
the rails, while the ship went swinging through the waves; and I
admired and envied the courage of their mothers, who sat by in the
sun and looked on with composure at these perilous feats. 'He'll
maybe be a sailor,' I heard one remark; 'now's the time to learn.'
I had been on the point of running forward to interfere, but stood
back at that, reproved. Very few in the more delicate classes have
the nerve to look upon the peril of one dear to them; but the life
of poorer folk, where necessity is so much more immediate and
imperious, braces even a mother to this extreme of endurance. And
perhaps, after all, it is better that the lad should break his neck
than that you should break his spirit.

And since I am here on the chapter of the children, I must mention