He was competent to pronounce the funereal oration of a ship, this son of ancient sea-folk, whose national existence, so little stained by the excesses of manly virtues, had demanded nothing but the merest foothold from the earth.  By the merits of his sea-wise forefathers and by the artlessness of his heart, he was made fit to deliver this excellent discourse.  There was nothing wanting in its orderly arrangement—­neither piety nor faith, nor the tribute of praise due to the worthy dead, with the edifying recital of their achievement.  She had lived, he had loved her; she had suffered, and he was glad she was at rest.  It was an excellent discourse.  And it was orthodox, too, in its fidelity to the cardinal article of a seaman’s faith, of which it was a single-minded confession.  “Ships are all right.”  They are.  They who live with the sea have got to hold by that creed first and last; and it came to me, as I glanced at him sideways, that some men were not altogether unworthy in honour and conscience to pronounce the funereal eulogium of a ship’s constancy in life and death.

After this, sitting by my side with his loosely-clasped hands hanging between his knees, he uttered no word, made no movement till the shadow of our ship’s sails fell on the boat, when, at the loud cheer greeting the return of the victors with their prize, he lifted up his troubled face with a faint smile of pathetic indulgence.  This smile of the worthy descendant of the most ancient sea-folk whose audacity and hardihood had left no trace of greatness and glory upon the waters, completed the cycle of my initiation.  There was an infinite depth of hereditary wisdom in its pitying sadness.  It made the hearty bursts of cheering sound like a childish noise of triumph.  Our crew shouted with immense confidence—­honest souls!  As if anybody could ever make sure of having prevailed against the sea, which has betrayed so many ships of great “name,” so many proud men, so many towering ambitions of fame, power, wealth, greatness!

As I brought the boat under the falls my captain, in high good-humour, leaned over, spreading his red and freckled elbows on the rail, and called down to me sarcastically, out of the depths of his cynic philosopher’s beard: 

“So you have brought the boat back after all, have you?”

Sarcasm was “his way,” and the most that can be said for it is that it was natural.  This did not make it lovable.  But it is decorous and expedient to fall in with one’s commander’s way.  “Yes.  I brought the boat back all right, sir,” I answered.  And the good man believed me.  It was not for him to discern upon me the marks of my recent initiation.  And yet I was not exactly the same youngster who had taken the boat away—­all impatience for a race against death, with the prize of nine men’s lives at the end.