and mutual helpfulness are gone.  When the day of trial comes,—­the wreck, the fire, the leak,—­subordination is lost, and every man scrambles for his own selfish safety, leaving women and children to the flames and the waves.  Why is it that ships, dismasted, indeed, but light and staunch, are so often found rolling abandoned on the seas?  It is the daily incident of our marine columns.  I have been told by an old shipmaster, how, when he was a young mate, his ship was dismasted on the Banks of Newfoundland, on a voyage to Europe.  The captain had been disabled and the vessel was leaking.  He came into command.  But in those days men never dreamed of leaving their ship till she was ready to leave them.  They rigged jury-masts, and, under short canvas and working at the pumps, brought their craft to the mouth of Plymouth Harbor.  The pilot demanded salvage, and was refused leave to come on board.  The mate had been into that port before, was a good seaman and a sharp observer, and he took his vessel safely to her anchorage himself, rather than burden his owners with a heavy claim.  Captains and mates will not now-a-days follow that lead, because they cannot trust their men, because with every emergency the morale of the forecastle is utterly gone.

For all this there is of course no universal panacea.  Nor do I believe that legislation will much help the matter.  The common-law of the seas, well carried out by competent courts of admiralty, is better than many statutes.  For emergencies require extraordinary powers and a wide discretion.  There can be no divided rule in a ship.  But if every man know his place and his duty, and none overstep it, there will come thereof successful and happy voyages.  There must be discipline, subordination, and law.  The republican theory stops with the shore.  “Obey orders, though you break owners,” is the Magna Charta of the main.  This can be well and wisely carried out only with some homogeneity of the ship’s company, with a community of feeling and a community of interest.  Everybody who has been off soundings knows, or ought to know, the difference between things “done with a will” and “sogering.”  If it be important on land to adjust the relations of employer and employed, it is doubly important on the sea, where the peril and the privation are great.  For it is a hard life, a life of unproductive toil, that oftenest shows no results while accomplishing great ends.  It cannot be made easy.  The gale and the lee-shore are the same as when the sea-kings of old dared them and did battle with them in the heroic energy of their old Norse blood.  The wet, the cold, the exposure must be, since you cannot put a Chilson’s furnace into a ship’s forecastle, nor wear India-rubbers and carry an umbrella when you go aloft.  But men will brave all such discomforts and the attendant perils with a hearty delight, if you will train up the right spirit in them.  Better the worst night that ever darkened off Hatteras, than