contemplating their murder. They walk around uneasily, search the horizon ahead, and cast regretful glances at the one astern, pay repeated visits to the log and act generally like a set of condemned victims. Your confidence under this condition begins to wilt again. You take the log index, go below, and find that your passage is half made. You show this to the crew, and they appear half satisfied and half doubtful, despite your assumed air of implicit faith. They seem to know that your face is acting, and that your stomach is not backing up the play. Just then the helmsman calls out that a steamship is in sight ahead. The smoke-boat approaches rapidly, running almost on the back-bearing to the one your craft is on—S. W. by W., as near as you can make it. As she draws near you recognize her as a coaster running between the place you are bound to and the place you have left. Here is positive evidence that you are on the right track. You strut round the cockpit with the airs of an admiral, and the timid members of your crew shrink into their lower garments.

But a few hours after passing the steamer, night comes on, and it begins to blow and get nasty. You call all hands, reef down, and thus check your speed, so that instead of making six knots you are only doing four. Then the wind hauls a bit more forward, and you have to flatten-in your sheets. This increases your leeway, and you decide to allow another point for it—making your course N. E., ½ E. Then you wonder if that is enough, and again begin to worry. By this time your crew have accepted their fate, and are in a profound state of despair, beyond even a murmur of insubordination, doing their work slowly and sullenly, as though every act was a part of a preparation to commit suicide.

Down to the chart you go again; pass over the course, and pricking off the distance, find that you are by your reckoning still twenty miles from the landfall you expect to make. The light on it is visible fifteen miles. Laying out this on the chart, you see that you can hardly miss hitting that big circle, and are somewhat assured. Now the wind falls light, and instead of being within the range of visibility of the light in an hour or so, it is three before the log says you have run far enough. You carefully search the horizon for it. No light is visible. A cold sweat begins to break out. You are lost—lost at sea. You must have allowed too little for leeway and have passed far outside of the light. What had you better do, keep your course, or haul up? After thinking it over, and again consulting the chart, you decide to hold the course for an hour longer. How slowly that hour drags away! At its expiration the log shows three and one-half miles more. You are now by your reckoning eleven and one-half miles from the light. Certainly you must see it. A long search with the glass; no light. You decide to haul up and try for it to the north'rd and west'rd, but before doing so have one more look. Hello! there it is, a point on the starboard bow. That's the light, sure enough. It flashes; you count ten seconds, fifteen seconds, darkness; again it flashes ten seconds. "Light ho!" you shout.

Has your log overrun that amount? You decide it has; but a few minutes later the light is lost again. That settles it—fog or mist inshore; the log is all right. So you stand boldly on, your whole mind aglow with the triumph you have just achieved—that of making a good landfall. The drama of Columbus at San Salvador is replayed, you taking the part of the great admiral, and your crew that of the conscience-stricken mutineers. You wonder why they ever doubted your skill and knowledge, forgetting that you doubted yourself.

The next day your crew strut proudly about the port like a lot of mariners just returned from circumnavigating the globe. They are proud of you, proud of their vessel, and very proud of themselves. But what a change it has worked in you! You are a very different man to-day from what you were the hour you took your departure to make that passage. To-day you have confidence in your skill and knowledge, and in yourself as a user of those powers.

I have written that little sketch to show you that knowing how to hand, reef and steer is not all that is needed to make a seaman. The knowledge of the methods of working sails and ship are only a part of the seaman's craft. His head as well as his hand must be trained. He must not only know his vessel thoroughly, but he must as thoroughly know himself.

ON BOATS IN GENERAL

"Is it come?" they said, on the banks of the Nile,
Who looked for the world's long-promised boat,
And saw that the lines he had drawn on a tile
Would make a good cruiser—if it would float,
Thro' pyramids, temples, and mummies stuffed,
We vainly search for this ideal plan;
We fear the Burgess of Pharaoh's bluffed—
Yet there was hope when that day began.

ON BOATS IN GENERAL

Men frequently come to me, and ask, "What sort of a boat would you recommend me to have?" My reply always is, "What for?" In that small phrase is contained the kernel of selection—what for? Do you want to cruise, go day-sailing, or race? Do you want it to go alone, or with a crew? Do you want to sail in rough or smooth water?

A boat that is suitable for cruising is not the thing for racing or day-sailing; a boat that would fill the bill if used on land-locked waters would make a poor showing on an open sea or in rough stretches of tide-swept channel.

Let us first consider the racing craft. Racing, as I have often told you, is a business, not a pastime. If you want to win, and those who race usually do, you must subordinate everything to that want. If you don't, you will never be a successful mug hunter. A racing boat must be built as lightly as the law allows. This not only means that her frame and planking must be kept down to eights, but she must be looted of everything that the rules will permit you to remove. She must have large, well-made and consequently expensive sails. Her gear must be of the finest and strongest make, and it must be kept up to the top notch of perfection by constant supervision and repair.

Knockabout

Then you must give up all below comforts and consent to live on bare necessities. You must forego all other pleasures and concentrate all your faculties on one thing—your boat. If you are willing to do this, and have the racing skipper eye and hand, you may pull out all right on top.

If, instead of racing, you just want a boat to knock round in during the day, your craft is far more easily chosen and secured. You won't have to read up several volumes of restrictions and rules, you won't have to nose through half a dozen classes to find the one in which the easiest-to-beat crowd harbor, before making up your mind and giving out your order. You can just suit yourself as to how long, how wide and how deep your craft is to be.