as. United we
stand: divided we fall.

The sea is three times bigger than the land, but three hundred times
less known. Yet even our everyday language is full of sea terms;
because so much of it, like so much of our blood, comes from the Hardy
Norsemen, and because so much of the very life of all the
English-speaking peoples depends upon the handy man at sea. Peoples
who have Norse blood, like French and Germans, but who have never lived
by sea-power, and peoples who, like the Russians and Chinese, have
neither sea-power nor a sea-folk's blood, never use sea terms in their
ordinary talk. They may dress up a landsman and put him on the stage
to talk the same sort of twaddle that our own stage sailors talk--all
about "shiver my timbers," "hitching his breeches," and "belaying the
slack of your jaw." But they do not talk the real sea sense we have
learnt from the handy man of whose strange life we know so little.

When we say "that slacker's not pulling his weight" we use a term that
has come down from the old Rowing Age, when a man who was not helping
the boat along more with his oar than he was keeping her back with his
weight really was the worst kind of "slacker." But most of the sea
terms we use in our land talk come from the Sailing Age of Drake and
Nelson. To be "A1" is to be like the best class of merchant ships that
are rated A1 for insurance. "First-rate," on the other hand, comes
from the Navy, and means ships of the largest size and strongest build,
like the super-dreadnoughts of to-day. If you make a mess of things
people say you are "on the wrong tack," may "get taken aback," and find
yourself "on your beam ends" or, worse still, "on the rocks." So you
had better remember that "if you won't be ruled by the rudder you are
sure to be ruled by the rock." If you do not "know the ropes" you will
not "keep on an even keel" when it's "blowing great guns." If you take
to drink you will soon "have three sheets in the wind," because you
will not have the sense to "steer a straight course," but, getting
"half seas over," perhaps "go by the board" or be "thrown overboard" by
friends who might have "brought you up with a round turn" before it was
too late. Remember three other bits of handy man's advice: "you'd
better not sail so close to the wind" (do not go so near to doing
something wrong), "don't speak to the man at the wheel" (because the
ship may get off her course while you are bothering him), and, wh