sion and safely distant in
prediction as was this; but I fear that for navies tacks and sheets
are dead, and coal whips very much alive. The wish in those days
fathered the thought. Who to dumb forgetfulness a prey could
voluntarily relinquish all that had been so identified with life and
thought, nor cast a longing, lingering look behind? So we plodded on,
acquiring laboriously, yet lovingly, knowledge that would have fitted
us to pass the examinations of Basil Hall and Peter Simple. To mention
the details of cutting and fitting rigging, getting over whole and
half tops, and other operations yet more recondite, would be to
involve the unprofessional reader in a maze of incomprehensible terms,
and the professional--of that period--in familiar recollections. Let
me, however, linger lovingly for ten lines on the knotting--"knotting
and splicing," as the never-divorced terms ran in the days when
rigging a topgallant-yard was a constituent part of our curriculum.
The man who has never viewed the realm of a seaman's knots from the
outside, and tried to get in, must not flatter himself that he fully
appreciates the phrase "knotty problem." I never got in; a few
elementary "bends," a square knot, and a bowline, were very near the
extent of my manual acquirements. The last I still retain, and use
whenever I make up a bundle for the express; but before such
mysteries--to me--as a Turk's-head and a double-wall, I merely bowed
in reverence. When handsomely turned out, I could recognize the fact;
but do them myself, no. I remember with humiliation that in 1862,
being then a young lieutenant, I was called without warning to hear a
section, one hour, in seamanship. As bad luck would have it, the
subject happened to be knotting, and there was one of the midshipmen
who had made a cruise in a merchant-ship. The knots I had to ask
about--to which that diabolical youngster invariably replied, "I can't
describe it, sir, but I will make it for you"--the convolutions
through which the strands went in his ready fingers, and my eyes
vainly strove to follow, are a poignant subject. There was no room for
the time-honored refuge of a puzzled instructor--"We will take up that
subject next recitation;" the confounded boy was ready right along,
and I had only to be thankful that there were "no questions asked."

There was one professional subject, "Naval Fleet Tactics" under sail,
which at the end of my time shone forth with a kind of sunset
splend