uch a part of it as the waves themselves--that
the affair ceased to be a struggle. It became a glorious great big
game. Yet for work we were so cool that, though we towed our balk
ashore and shoved off after another, we hardly got wet above the knees.

We were beside ourselves, and all ourselves. Where does that exultant
feeling, that devil-beyond-oneself, come from? From what depth of human
personality does it uprise, whirling, like those primitive
passions--sex, hunger, rage, fear--which may be boxed up awhile by the
will, but which, once unloosed, sweep the will aside and carry one off
like froth in a gale, until physical exhaustion sets in and allows the
will to re-assert itself? One understands the evolution of the
primitive self-preservative and race-preservative passions. How has
this latent daredevilry become so implanted in us that it rises from
the bottom depths of one's nature; and how has it become ordinarily so
hidden?

Above all what is the effect of this passion on seafaring men? To say
that familiarity breeds contempt is--even if it be correct--to beg the
question. What is the effect of that familiarity? It might be said that
they are the subjects of a sub-acute, persistent form of the
daredevilry which uprose in me unexpectedly and acutely. But again, the
sub-acute lifelong form of it is likely to have the greater influence
on a man's self, on his morale and his character. Hence, I believe, the
width of these men, their largeness. It was good to hear Tony talk in
the most matter-of-fact manner (yet with a touch of reverence, as
towards an ever-possible contingency) of a Salcombe fisherman who was
drowned. "Her was drownded all through his own carelessness, and didn't
rise in the water for a month. ('Tis nine days down and nine days up,
wi' the crab bites out of 'ee, as a rule.) An' he wer carried up by the
tide an' collected, like, out o' the water just at the back o' his own
house. Nice quiet chap he was." That coolness of speech one saw
plainly, is the outcome not of contempt, still less of non-feeling, but
of familiarity, of a breadth of mind in looking at the catastrophe. I
have not noticed such breadth of mind elsewhere except among those who
live precariously and the few of very great religious faith.

An hour after bringing in the balks, we were hauling the boats over the
wall, and at high tide the seas swept across the road.

30

[Sidenote: _A SING-SONG_]

Many an evening we have had sm