When you belay the sheets of your sail, make a knot that can be untied by a single pull at the loose end:  any boatman will show you how to do this. Never make fast the sheets in any other way. Hold the sheets in your hands if the wind is at all squally or strong.  Do not venture out in a heavy wind.  Stow your baggage snugly before you start:  tubs made by sawing a flour-barrel in two are excellent to throw loose stuff into.  Remember to be careful; keep your eyes open, and know what you are going to do before you try it.  The saying of an old sea-captain comes to me here:  “I would rather sail a ship around the world, than to go down the bay in a boat sailed by a boy.”

RECKONING LOST.

It often happens in travelling, that the sun rises in what appears the north, west, or south, and we seem to be moving in the wrong direction, so that when we return home our remembrance of the journey is confused.  Perhaps a few hints on this subject may help the reader.  Supposing your day’s journey ends at Blanktown, where you find your compass-points apparently reversed.  It then becomes natural for you to make matters worse by trying to lay out in your mind a new map, with Blanktown for the “hub,” and east in the west, and so on.  You can often prevent these mishaps, and can always make them less annoying, by studying your map well both before and during your journey; and by keeping in your mind continually, with all the vividness you can, what you are really doing.  As far as Blanktown is concerned, you will have two impressions, just as we all have two impressions with regard to the revolution of the earth on its axis:  apparently the sun rises, goes over and down; but in our minds we can see the sun standing still, and the earth turning from west to east.

Upon leaving Blanktown you are likely to carry the error along with you, and to find yourself moving in what appears to be the wrong way.  Keep in mind with all the vividness possible, the picture of what you are really doing, and keep out of mind as much as you can the ugly appearance of going the wrong way.  Every important change you make, be sure to “see it” in the mind’s eye, and let the natural eye be blind to all that is deceiving.  After a while things will grow real, and you must try to keep them so.  The more perfectly you know the route and all its details, the less you will be troubled in this way.

If you are travelling in the cars, and if you have a strong power of imagination, you can very easily right errors of this kind by learning from the map exactly what you are doing, and then by sitting next to the window, shut your eyes as you go around a curve that tends to aggravate the difficulty, and hold fast what you get on curves that help you.  If you sit on the left side of the car, and look ahead, the cars seem to sweep continually a little to the right, and vice versa, when really moving straight ahead,—­provided your imagination is good.