124 THE CALL OF THE SEA 



davits, bridges, and stanchions, she may pitch and 

 roll till cabin and hold are a series of crashes and 

 smashes, but those indomitable engines keep up 

 their pulsations. You lie awake in the middle of 

 the night clinging to your berth, hearing the whip- 

 like swish of the spray flying by the port hole, 

 listening to the roar of the wind in the rigging, 

 feeling the vessel pitch and stagger under you, 

 and perhaps wondering if rivets and plates of steel 

 can long hold out against such wrenching ; but 

 still beneath you, skipping no beat, is the welcome 

 thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump of the 

 engines. She was designed to defy the winds and 

 fight the elements and she does it — with some 

 groanings from strained partition, beam, and 

 girder it may be, but still she does it. 



/. C. Van Dyke. 



(From The Mirror of the Sea) 



A ND besides, your modern ship, which is a 

 steamship, makes her passage on other prin- 

 ciples than yielding to the weather and humouring 

 the sea. She receives smashing blows, but she 

 advances ; it is a slogging fight, and not a scientific 

 campaign. The machinery, the steel, the fire, the 

 steam, have stepped in between the man and the 

 sea. A modern fleet of ships does not so much 

 make use of the sea as exploit a highway. The 

 modern ship is not the sport of the waves. Let us 



