but sea, sea, sea. Then the little boat
you are in, and know in every plank, and love too, becomes more than ever
cherished as a friend. It is your only visible trust, and, if it _is_ a
good boat, you trust it well, for indeed it seems to try its very best,
like a horse on the desert plain, that knows it must go on if it is ever
to get to the other side. Then as the cliffs, that looked high behind
you, dwindle into a line of deep blue, the compass by your knees becomes
a magic thing, with no tongue indeed to speak, but surely a brain it must
have to know the way so well.

For hours we went on thus in silent pleasure, gazing at the gentle needle
as it moved without noise; and, with nothing around but plash of waves,
bright sun, and a feeling of hot silence, the spell of sleep was
overpowering. Homer sometimes nodded, it is said, and he would have
certainly had a good nap had he steered long thus. The sinking off into
these delicious slumbers was imperceptible, and perfectly beyond the
will's control. In a moment of trance I would be far away in dreamland,
and with a thousand incidents, all enacted in orderly succession, with
fights, wrecks, or pageantry, or the confused picture of bright-coloured
nothings which fancy paints on the half-alive brain.

From these sweet dreams there was a rude awakening; a slap from the sea
on my face, as the yawl, untended, suddenly rounded to, or a rattling
taptoo on the deck when the jib-sheets found they were free.

Then for a time I would resolutely insist upon attention--every moment of
slumber being a positive wandering from the course; but no, the outer
self that demands a nap will not be denied by the inner nobler self that
commands alertness.

Only one single sea-gull did I see in thirty hours. One vessel also far
off was the sole break upon the painfully straight horizon, and as the
wind gradually died away into nothing, the prospect did not improve.

Then came the up and down riding over seas without gaining a yard, the
"prancing" of the vessel which had galloped forth in the morning like a
horse in its first bounds on grass when, leaving a hard road, its hoof
paws gladly the springy turf.

Some feelings that came up then from deep recesses in the mind were new,
but too new and unnamed to put in words. Alone on the waters, when you
cannot see land, is a strange condition. However, if only fog or
darkness hides the land you still feel that land is there. Quite anot