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February, losing seven hundred Souls. They were in south-west Weather, the sailing-master could not see,— he gambl'd as to which Headland it was, mistaking the Bolt for Rome Head and lost all."
    "This is League for League the most dangerous Body of Water in the world," complains another. "Sands and Streams, Banks and Races, I've no Peace till we're past the Start Point and headed for the Sea."
    "Can this Lad get us out all right?"
    "Oh, young Smith's been around forever. Collier Sailor. If he's alive, he must have learn'd somewhat."
    Passing the Start-Point at last, the cock's-comb of hilltops to starboard, the Ship leaning in the up-Channel wind, the late sun upon the heights,— more brilliant gold and blue than either Landsman has ever seen,— the Cold of approaching Night carrying an edge, the possibility that by Morning the Weather will be quite brisk indeed..."Su-ma-tra," sing the sailors of the Seahorse,
    "Where girls all look like Cleo-
    Pat-tra,
    And when you're done you'll simply
    Barter 'er,
    For yet another twice as
    Hot, tra-
    La la-la la-la la-la la—
    La la la, la..."
    From the day he assum'd command of the Seahorse, Capt. Smith has lived in a tidy corner of Hell previously unfamiliar to him. Leaving the rainswept landing, rowed out into the wet heaving Groves of masts and spars upon Spithead, 'mid sewage and tar and the Breath of the Wind,
      he had searched, with increasing desperation, for some encouraging first sight of his new command, till oblig'd at last to accept the remote scruffy Sixth Rate throwing itself like a tether'd beast against its anchor-cables. Yet, yet,...through the crystalline spray, how gilded comes she,— how corposantly edg'd in a persisting and, if Glories there be, glorious light...and he knows her, it must be from a Dream, how could it be other? A Light in which all Pain and failure, all fear, are bleach'd away....
    He'd been greeted at the Quarter-deck by a Youth of loutish and ungather'd appearance, recruited but recently in a press-gang sweep of Wapping, who exclaim'd, "Damme! Look at this, Boys! An officer wha' knows enough to come in out of the rain!"
    Trying not to bark, Capt. Smith replied, "What's your name, sailor?" "By some I be styl'd, 'Blinky.' And who might you be?" "Attend me, Blinky,— I am the Captain of this Vessel." "Well," advised the young salt, "you've got a good job,— don't fuck up."
    Steady advice. He haunts his little Raider like a nearly unsensed ghost, now silent upon his side of the Quarter-deck, now bending late and dutifully over the lunar-distance forms. "He wishes to be taken as a man of Science," opines the Revd upon first meeting the Astronomers, - perhaps he even seeks your own good opinion. Mention'd in a report to the Royal Society? However you do that sort of thing." Choosing to stand with the ingenious and Philosophickal wing of the Naval profession rather than its Traditional and bloody-minded one, though he would fight honorably, Capt. Smith does not consider his best game to be war.
    The Vessel herself, however, enjoys a Reputation for Nerve, having proved it at Quebec, fearless under the French batteries of Beauport, part of a Diversion whilst the real assault proceeded quite upon the other flank, out of the troop-cariying ships that had sailed past the city, further upstream. Thenceforward is her Glory assur'd. She has done her duty in the service of a miracle in that year of miracles, 1759, upon whose Ides of March Dr. Johnson happen'd to remark, "No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”
    Some would call her a Frigate, though officially she is a couple of guns shy, causing others to add the prefix "Jackass,"— a nautical term. Neither Names nor modest throw-weights have kept her from mixing it up with bigger ships. Capt. Smith has long understood that tho' a Sea Horse may be born in spirit an Arab stallion, sometimes