Some young fellows set out in their professional life by making themselves thorough-bred sailors; their hands are familiar with the tar-bucket; their fingers are cut across with the marks of the ropes they have been pulling and hauling; and their whole soul is wrapped up in the intricate science of cutting out sails, and of rigging masts and yards.  Their dreams are of cringles and reef-tackles, of knots, splices, grummets, and dead-eyes.  They can tell the length, to a fathom, of every rope in the boatswain’s warrant, from the flying jib down-haul to the spanker-sheet; and the height of every spar, from the main-top-gallant truck to the heel of the lower mast.  Their delight is in stowing the hold; dragging about kentlage is their joy; they are the very souls of the ship’s company.  In harbour they are eternally paddling in the boats, rowing, or sculling, or sailing about; they are always the first in fishing or bathing parties; in short, they are for ever at some sailor-kind of work.  At sea, their darling music is the loud whistle of the hardest storm-stay-sail breeze, with an occasional accompaniment of a split main-topsail.  “The harder it blows, and the faster she goes,” the merrier are they; “strong gales and squally” is the item they love best to chalk on the log-board; and even when the oldest top-men begin to hesitate about lying out on the yard to gather in the flapping remnants of the torn canvas, these gallant youngsters glory in the opportunity of setting an example of what a gentleman sailor can perform.  So at it they go, utterly reckless of consequences; and by sliding down the lift, or scrambling out, monkey fashion, to the yard-arm, where they sit laughing, though the spar be more than half sprung through, they accomplish their purpose of shaming the others into greater exertions.  It is well known that one of the ablest, if not the very ablest, of the distinguished men whom the penetrating sagacity of Nelson discovered and brought forward, owed his first introduction to the notice of that wonderful commander by an exploit of this very description.

These are the dashing boys who cut out privateers, jump overboard after men who cannot swim, and who, when the ship is on fire, care not a farthing for the smoke and heat, but dive below with the engine-pipe in their hands, and either do good service, or perish in the flames with a jolly huzza on their lips.  Such may fairly be called the muscular parts of our body nautical, for there is no gummy flesh about them; and when handled with skill, they form the stout instruments which help essentially to win such battles as the Nile and Trafalgar.