o pedestrian could
stop his progress within three yards, but by anchoring to a lamp-post,
and even then swinging round with force. Why, there would be scarcely a
coal-heaver who would not be whitened by collision with some baker's boy.
Ladies in full sail would be run down, and dandies would be sunk by the
dozen.

The fact is, that vessels on the wide sea are like travellers on a broad
plain and not on a road at all, and the two cases do not admit of being
dealt with by the same rule, and it is not wonderful that there should be
many collisions in the open sea while there are so few in the Thames, the
water street of the world. We may learn some lessons from land for safe
traffic on water. The cabman who "pulls up" is sure to signal first with
his whip to the omnibus astern of him, and the coachman who means to
cross to the "wrong side" never does so without a warning to those he is
bearing down upon. What is most wanted, then, on the open water, is some
ready, sure, and costless signal, to say, "I am going _that_ way" (right
or left); for nearly all collisions at sea are caused by one ship not
being able to know what the other is going to do. {50}

This is my thought on the matter after many thoughts and some experience:
meantime while we have ate, and talked and thought, our yawl has slipped
over six miles of sea, and we must rouse up from a reverie to scan the
changing picture.

Glance at the barometer--note the time. Trim the sails, and bear away to
that pretty fleet of fishing boats bobbing up and down as they trail
their nets, or the men gather in the glittering fish, and munch their
rude breakfasts, tediously heated by smoky stoves, while they gaze on the
white-sailed stranger, and mumble among themselves as to what in the
world _he_ can be. The sun mounts and the breeze presses till we are at
the bay of the Somme with its shifting sands, its incomprehensible
currents, and its low and treacherous coast, buoyed and beaconed enough
to puzzle you right into the shoals. The yacht, with my friend S--- in
her, bound for Paris, has just been wrecked on that bank near
Cayeux--unpleasant news now--and there is St. Valery, from whence King
William the Conqueror sailed with his fleet for England, as may be seen
on the curious tapestry at Bayeux worked by his Queen's hands, and still
almost as fresh as then. I never saw a place appear so differently from
sea and from land as this strange port, so I ran in just to r