pist to espouse the cause of Greece. We may
fret, fume, and fight; but the thing called Fate everlastingly sustains
an armed neutrality.

Yet though all this be so, nevertheless, in our own hearts, we mould
the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own
gods. Each mortal casts his vote for whom he will to rule the worlds; I
have a voice that helps to shape eternity; and my volitions stir the
orbits of the furthest suns. In two senses, we are precisely what we
worship. Ourselves are Fate.

CHAPTER LXXVI.

THE CHAINS.

When wearied with the tumult and occasional contention of the gun-deck
of our frigate, I have often retreated to a port-hole, and calmed
myself down by gazing broad off upon a placid sea. After the battle-din
of the last two chapters, let us now do the like, and, in the
sequestered fore-chains of the Neversink, tranquillise ourselves, if we
may.

Notwithstanding the domestic communism to which the seamen in a
man-of-war are condemned, and the publicity in which actions the most
diffident and retiring in their nature must be performed, there is yet
an odd corner or two where you may sometimes steal away, and, for a few
moments, almost be private.

Chief among these places is the _chains_, to which I would sometimes
hie during our pleasant homeward-bound glide over those pensive
tropical latitudes. After hearing my fill of the wild yarns of our top,
here would I recline--if not disturbed--serenely concocting information
into wisdom.

The chains designates the small platform outside of the hull, at the
base of the large shrouds leading down from the three mast-heads to the
bulwarks. At present they seem to be getting out of vogue among
merchant-vessels, along with the fine, old-fashioned quarter-galleries,
little turret-like ap-purtenances, which, in the days of the old
Admirals, set off the angles of an armed ship's stern. Here a naval
officer might lounge away an hour after action, smoking a cigar, to
drive out of his whiskers the villainous smoke of the gun-powder. The
picturesque, delightful stern-gallery, also, a broad balcony
overhanging the sea, and entered from the Captain's cabin, much as you
might enter a bower from a lady's chamber; this charming balcony,
where, sailing over summer seas in the days of the old Peruvian
viceroys, the Spanish cavalier Mendanna, of Lima, made love to the Lady
Isabella, as they voyaged in quest of the Solomon Islands, the fabulou