c
calling. Considering, however, that the sailor goes to sea holding his
life in his hands, I cannot but think that his mere occupation is
perilous enough to satisfy the romantic demands of the shore-going
dreamer. It is feigned that the sea-faring life is not one jot more
dangerous than most of the laborious callings followed ashore. Let no
man credit this. The sailor never springs aloft, never slides out to a
yard-arm, never gives battle to the thunderous canvas, scarcely
performs a duty, indeed, that does not contain a distinct menace to
his life. That the calling has less of danger in it in these days than
it formerly held I will not undertake to determine. If in former times
ships put to sea destitute of the scientific equipment which
characterises the fabrics of this age, the mariner supplied the
deficiencies of the shipyard by caution and patience. He was never in
a hurry. He waited with a resigned countenance upon the will of the
wind. He plied his lead and log-line with indefatigable diligence.
There was no prompt despatch in his day, no headlong thundering,
through weather as thick as mud in a wineglass, to reach his port. We
have diminished many of the risks he ran through imperfect appliances,
but, on the other hand, we have raised a plentiful stock of our own,
so that the balance between then and now shows pretty level.

My sea-faring experiences covered about eight years, and they hit a
traditional period of immense moment--I mean the gradual
transformation of the marine fabric from wood into iron. I was always
afloat in wood, however, and never knew what it was to have an iron
plate between me and the yearning wash of the brine outside until I
went on a voyage to Natal and back in a big ocean steamer that all day
long throbbed to the maddened heart in her engine room, like some
black and gleaming leviathan rendered hysterical by the lances of
whalers feeling for its life, and all night stormed through the dark
ocean shadow like a body of fire, faster than a gale of wind could in
my time have driven the swiftest clipper keel that furrowed blue
water.

What hair-breadth escapes did I meet with? I have been asked. Was I
ever marooned? Ever cast away, as Jack says, on the top crust of a
half-penny loaf? Ever overboard among sharks? Ever gazing madly round
the horizon, the sole occupant of a frizzling boat, in search of a
ship where I might obtain water to cool my blue and frothing lips?
Well, my duff is no