The sun., 1918-10-20

bunk above him, one SMITH, young MARTIN suf-
fcred violence at the hands of only person. 1t
is true that SMITH kicked him while going aloft at
night which was unpleasant and even little dan
gerous. But his chief difficulty was this: There
was a Holander in the port watch, old Brown, who
took an immense aversion to the un-ordinary
man. On the foreyard one day BROWN struck
DAVID such repeated and vigorous blows with his
knotty fist that the green hand had to come in on
the yard and descend to the deck. The mate, Mr..
WALKER, affected not to see. On another occasion
after some remarks about extinguishing the dim
lamp which Lit the 70 c's lie Brown advanced in the
dark to the edge of DAv1Ds bunk breathing threats
and curses. The youth sat the edge Of his bunk,
his sheath knife gripped in his hand and des-
perate determination formed to ab it in the square
heads eye Happily Brown made so much noise
that he woke SMITH, who was sleeping on deck out
side the focsle door; for this in the tropics.
The ensuing wrangle between these two lords of the
watch averted the necessity for a murder forward.
Sea Oaths and Chanteys.
1t is to be regretted that an inescapable and, on
the whole salutary convention prevents Mr.. RIEsEN
BERG from reporting faithfully the language of Mr..
JERK, the Nova Scotia mate. A blue nose like Mr..
JERK invariably commands remarkably forceful
vocabulary; We doubt if what Mr.. WALKER of the
Wayfarer said to DAVID MARTIN could hold a can
die in comparison. And yet DAVID found the mates
characterizations startling and disturbing, while
prepared now to concede that they were, in the
strictest sense, necessary. DAVID was singularly
dense and he was just little too old to learn
quickly; boy should go to in his teens and not
too late In his teens either, while he is 1.-the and
timber and can spring about the rigging like
monkey. There is no hardship in going aloft under
ordinary conditions and with the mate on deck and
some kinds of work going forward it is much pleas
anter aloft than allow. DAVID had much to do with
loosing sail and overhauling buntlines and making
up gaskets and hardly time that he remembers
when he did not prolong these slight tasks as much
as possible. Then Mr.. WALKER, gazing up from the
waist, would utter short, sarcastic words topped
with command to come down out of that, you
Bloody Useless Strange how the exact word
eludes one 1t never eluded Mr.. WALKER.
Swearing as practised at sea is highly profes-
sional undertaking, but the nature and need Of it
are not appreciated by landsmen, any more than
they grasp the nature and need Of chanteys and
yoho-ing on a rope. A flying wedge entering a
subway car at Brooklyn Bridge does not lift
wall or dirge without words. The policemen at
Forty-second street and Fifth avenue do not regu-
late traffic by well directed strings of curses Even
gang of men about to blast the rock of upper Man.
haitian preparatory to laying the foundations of an
apartment house with Byzantine name do not
sing in unison:
Way up aloft this yard must 60,
Well roll the cotton down;
Way up aloft this var ! must go,
Well roll the cotton DOWN.
Men ashore do not do these things because they
have no sense of the common effort because indeed,
there is common effort; there is only dovetail-
ing of individual effort, and it is for all individual
and not common end The enterprises ashore
which do involve common effort for common end
are few and far between. A war is one of them;
and when men 60 to war they &C singing.
The Lesson Of the Sea.
But at sea men have always what CONRAD calls
that "sense of overmatched littleness." At sea
there exists always what Mr. RIEsENBERG describes
very aptly-as "despotic democracy; form
of government that can be paraleled ashore only
in the armies of republic. At sea men are not
misled with the notion that all men are brothers,
they know full well that all men are not brothers