ON THE OCEAN WAVE 71 



friendly way, tho.ugh, without prejudice, I can honestly 

 say with no success, and certainly with more accidents 

 below and aloft. Once, drilling in Kiel harbour, being 

 aloft, I saw an unfortunate French midshipman go 

 head first from the mizzen crosstrees of the French 

 flagship the Villeneuve and flatten out into a mere 

 heap on the ship's poop. There is no sound more 

 sickening than the thud of a man as he strikes the 

 deck when falling from aloft. 



But that numbers of accidents should arise in sail- 

 drill is not astonishing when one thinks that masts and 

 spars, measuring perhaps seventy or eighty feet long, 

 and weighing two or three tons, are whisked about 

 with bewildering speed with nothing but men's hands 

 and brains to guide them ; hundreds of men crammed 

 into a space of a few hundred feet, where nothing but 

 the most marvellous organization and discipline can 

 avert death, on deck or aloft. To the landsman who 

 understands nothing of the difficulty involved in rapidly 

 shifting these great masts and yards, or in reefing and 

 furling thousands of square yards of stiff canvas 

 perhaps wet or half-frozen the rapidity with which it 

 is done is, perhaps, the chief wonder in his mind, but 

 to us who know it is admiration for the discipline an,d 

 nerve which it all means. For ropes, running like 

 lightning through blocks that are instantly too hot to 

 touch from friction, have to be checked within a few 

 inches, requiring the utmost coolness and presence of 

 mind, whilst the officer in command has to superintend 

 what to the uninitiated looks like a tangled maze of 

 cordage, which, however, is in reality no more in con- 

 fusion than threads flying through a loom. In an 

 instant this officer may see something going wrong ; 



