near a visitation. All genuine sailors are blessed with strong faith, as
they must be, by nature's compensation. Their bodies continually going
up and down upon perpetual fluxion, they never could live if their minds
did the same, like the minds of stationary landsmen. Therefore their
minds are of stanch immobility, to restore the due share of firm
element. And not only that, but these men have compressed (through
generations of circumstance), from small complications, simplicity.
Being out in all weathers, and rolling about so, how can they stand
upon trifles? Solid stays, and stanchions, and strong bulwarks are their
need, and not a dance of gnats in gossamer; hating all fogs, they blow
not up with their own breath misty mysteries, and gazing mainly at
the sky and sea, believe purely in God and the devil. In a word, these
sailors have religion.

Some of their religion is not well pronounced, but declares itself
in overstrong expressions. However, it is in them, and at any moment
waiting opportunity of action--a shipwreck or a grape-shot; and the
chaplain has good hopes of them when the doctor has given them over.

Now one of their principal canons of faith, and the one best observed
in practice, is (or at any rate used to be) that a man is bound to wear
ear-rings. For these, as sure tradition shows, and no pious mariner
would dare to doubt, act as a whetstone in all weathers to the keen
edge of the eyes. Semble--as the lawyers say--that this idea was born of
great phonetic facts in the days when a seaman knew his duty better
than the way to spell it; and when, if his outlook were sharpened by
a friendly wring from the captain of the watch, he never dreamed of a
police court.

But Robin Lyth had never cared to ask why he wore ear-rings. His nature