enough for him. And yet, somehow, nothing ever seems to go right

in this ship. I tell you what: she is naturally unhandy."
The "old man," of course, was his captain, who just then came on

deck in a silk hat and brown overcoat, and, with a civil nod to us,
went ashore. He was certainly not more than thirty, and the

elderly mate, with a murmur to me of "That's my old man," proceeded
to give instances of the natural unhandiness of the ship in a sort

of deprecatory tone, as if to say, "You mustn't think I bear a
grudge against her for that."

The instances do not matter. The point is that there are ships
where things DO go wrong; but whatever the ship - good or bad,

lucky or unlucky - it is in the forepart of her that her chief mate
feels most at home. It is emphatically HIS end of the ship,

though, of course, he is the executivesupervisor of the whole.
There are HIS anchors, HIS headgear, his foremast, his station for

manoeuvring when the captain is in charge. And there, too, live
the men, the ship's hands, whom it is his duty to keep employed,

fair weather or foul, for the ship's welfare. It is the chief
mate, the only figure of the ship's afterguard, who comes bustling

forward at the cry of "All hands on deck!" He is the satrap of
that province in the autocratic realm of the ship, and more

personally responsible for anything that may happen there.
There, too, on the approach to the land, assisted by the boatswain

and the carpenter, he "gets the anchors over" with the men of his
own watch, whom he knows better than the others. There he sees the

cable ranged, the windlass disconnected, the compressors opened;
and there, after giving his own last order, "Stand clear of the

cable!" he waits attentive, in a silent ship that forges slowly
ahead towards her picked-out berth, for the sharp shout from aft,

"Let go!" Instantly bending over, he sees the trusty iron fall
with a heavy plunge under his eyes, which watch and note whether it

has gone clear.
For the anchor "to go clear" means to go clear of its own chain.

Your anchor must drop from the bow of your ship with no turn of
cable on any of its limbs, else you would be riding to a foul

anchor. Unless the pull of the cable is fair on the ring, no
anchor can be trusted even on the best of holding ground. In time

of stress it is bound to drag, for implements and men must be
treated fairly to give you the "virtue" which is in them. The

anchor is an emblem of hope, but a foul anchor is worse than the
most fallacious of false hopes that ever lured men or nations into

a sense of security. And the sense of security, even the most
warranted, is a bad councillor. It is the sense which, like that

exaggerated feeling of well-beingominous of the coming on of
madness, precedes the swift fall of disaster. A seaman labouring

under an undue sense of security becomes at once worth hardly half
his salt. Therefore, of all my chief officers, the one I trusted

most was a man called B-. He had a red moustache, a lean face,
also red, and an uneasy eye. He was worth all his salt.

On examining now, after many years, the residue of the feeling
which was the outcome of the contact of our personalities, I

discover, without much surprise, a certain flavour of dislike.
Upon the whole, I think he was one of the most uncomfortable

shipmates possible for a young commander. If it is permissible to
criticise the absent, I should say he had a little too much of the

sense of insecurity which is so invaluable in a seaman. He had an
extremely disturbing air of being everlastingly ready (even when

seated at table at my right hand before a plate of salt beef) to
grapple with some impendingcalamity. I must hasten to add that he

had also the other qualification necessary to make a trustworthy
seaman - that of an absolute confidence in himself. What was

really wrong with him was that he had these qualities in an
unrestful degree. His eternallywatchfuldemeanour, his jerky,

nervous talk, even his, as it were, determined silences, seemed to
imply - and, I believe, they did imply - that to his mind the ship

was never safe in my hands. Such was the man who looked after the
anchors of a less than five-hundred-ton barque, my first command,

now gone from the face of the earth, but sure of a tenderly
remembered existence as long as I live. No anchor could have gone

down foul under Mr. B-'s piercing eye. It was good for one to be
sure of that when, in an open roadstead, one heard in the cabin the

wind pipe up; but still, there were moments when I detested Mr. B-
exceedingly. From the way he used to glare sometimes, I fancy that

more than once he paid me back with interest. It so happened that
we both loved the little barque very much. And it was just the

defect of Mr. B-'s inestimable qualities that he would never
persuade himself to believe that the ship was safe in my hands. To

begin with, he was more than five years older than myself at a time
of life when five years really do count, I being twenty-nine and he

thirty-four; then, on our first leaving port (I don't see why I
should make a secret of the fact that it was Bangkok), a bit of

manoeuvring of mine amongst the islands of the Gulf of Siam had
given him an unforgettable scare. Ever since then he had nursed in

secret a bitter idea of my utter recklessness. But upon the whole,
and unless the grip of a man's hand at parting means nothing

whatever, I conclude that we did like each other at the end of two
years and three months well enough.

The bond between us was the ship; and therein a ship, though she
has female attributes and is loved very unreasonably, is different

from a woman. That I should have been tremendously" target="_blank" title="ad.可怕地；极大地">tremendouslysmitten with my
first command is nothing to wonder at, but I suppose I must admit

that Mr. B-'s sentiment was of a higher order. Each of us, of
course, was extremelyanxious about the good appearance of the

beloved object; and, though I was the one to glean compliments
ashore, B- had the more intimate pride of feeling, resembling that

of a devoted handmaiden. And that sort of faithful and proud
devotion went so far as to make him go about flicking the dust off

the varnished teak-wood rail of the little craft with a silk
pocket-handkerchief - a present from Mrs. B-, I believe.

That was the effect of his love for the barque. The effect of his
admirable lack of the sense of security once went so far as to make

him remark to me: "Well, sir, you ARE a lucky man!"
It was said in a tone full of significance, but not exactly

offensive, and it was, I suppose, my innate tact that prevented my
asking, "What on earth do you mean by that?"

Later on his meaning was illustrated more fully on a dark night in
a tight corner during a dead on-shore gale. I had called him up on

deck to help me consider our extremelyunpleasant situation. There
was not much time for deep thinking, and his summing-up was: "It

looks pretty bad, whichever we try; but, then, sir, you always do
get out of a mess somehow."

VI.
It is difficult to disconnect the idea of ships' anchors from the

idea of the ship's chief mate - the man who sees them go down clear
and come up sometimes foul; because not even the most unremitting

care can always prevent a ship, swinging to winds and tide, from
taking an awkward turn of the cable round stock or fluke. Then the

business of "getting the anchor" and securing it afterwards is
unduly prolonged, and made a weariness to the chief mate. He is

the man who watches the growth of the cable - a sailor's phrase
which has all the force, precision, and imagery of technical

language that, created by simple men with keen eyes for the real
aspect of the things they see in their trade, achieves the just

expression seizing upon the essential, which is the ambition of the
artist in words. Therefore the sailor will never say, "cast

anchor," and the ship-master aft will hail his chief mate on the
forecastle in impressionistic phrase: "How does the cable grow?"

Because "grow" is the right word for the long drift of a cable
emerging aslant under the strain, taut as a bow-string above the

water. And it is the voice of the keeper of the ship's anchors
that will answer: "Grows right ahead, sir," or "Broad on the bow,"

or whateverconcise and deferential shout will fit the case.
There is no order more noisily given or taken up with lustier

shouts on board a homeward-bound merchant ship than the command,
"Man the windlass!" The rush of expectant men out of the

forecastle, the snatching of hand-spikes, the tramp of feet, the