222 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



have been a quaint experience for both parties to such 

 bargains. On one side, the stolid, unemotional, but 

 freedom-loving Dutchman or Briton, without dash or 

 initiative, but possessed of that invaluable quality, 

 perseverance ; on the other, the vivacious Italian, 

 keen as a rapier, bubbling over with intelligence and 

 receptivity, but so mercurial that he was continually 

 alternating between the heights of hope and the depths 

 of despair. There was also undoubtedly much friction 

 because of the impossibility of the Italian master or 

 pilot to comprehend the essential difference between 

 the slaves he had been in the habit of commanding 

 and these sturdy freedom lovers, who, although they 

 did submit themselves to savage punishments, insisted 

 that those punishments should be legal, and those 

 laws assented to by themselves. Still more must the 

 Italian mariners have been surprised at the wonderful 

 way in which the British islanders and Dutch low- 

 landers assimilated the teaching they received and 

 improved upon it until their teachers were fain to 

 confess that their pupils were outstripping them in 

 a marvellous fashion. 



Now, it is a moot point whether in such wondrous 

 enterprises as the opening up of new worlds, or of new 

 forms of government, it is better to be the pioneer 

 or the vanguard of the main army. There is always, 

 of course, an intensely human desire to be first in the 

 field, to skim the cream off the venture, as it were ; 

 but history teaches us that it is but rarely that the 

 pioneers in any national enterprise have eventually 

 profited much thereby. But in the present case it 

 really must have seemed to both Britons and Dutch- 

 men, imbued, of course, with the hazy notions of the 



