ble body of men was walking around with the windlass or
variously engaged on the forecastle-head. Of the crew proper were two
watches of fifteen men each. In addition were sailmakers, boys, bosuns,
and the carpenter. Nearly forty men were they, but such men! They were
sad and lifeless. There was no vim, no go, no activity. Every step and
movement was an effort, as if they were dead men raised out of coffins or
sick men dragged from hospital beds. Sick they were--whiskey-poisoned.
Starved they were, and weak from poor nutrition. And worst of all, they
were imbecile and lunatic.

I looked aloft at the intricate ropes, at the steel masts rising and
carrying huge yards of steel, rising higher and higher, until steel masts
and yards gave way to slender spars of wood, while ropes and stays turned
into a delicate tracery of spider-thread against the sky. That such a
wretched muck of men should be able to work this magnificent ship through
all storm and darkness and peril of the sea was beyond all seeming. I
remembered the two mates, the super-efficiency, mental and physical, of
Mr. Mellaire and Mr. Pike--could they make this human wreckage do it?
They, at least, evinced no doubts of their ability. The sea? If this
feat of mastery were possible, then clear it was that I knew nothing of
the sea.

I looked back at the misshapen, starved, sick, stumbling hulks of men who
trod the dreary round of the windlass. Mr. Pike was right. These were
not the brisk, devilish, able-bodied men who manned the ships of the old
clipper-ship days; who fought their officers, who had the points of their
sheath-knives broken off, who killed and were killed, but who did their
work as men. These men, these shambling carcasses at the windlass--I
looked, and looked, and vainly I strove to conjure the vision of them
swinging aloft in rack and storm, "clearing the raffle," as Kipling puts
it, "with their clasp knives in their teeth." Why didn't they sing a
chanty as they hove the anchor up? In the old days, as I had read, the
anchor always came up to the rollicking sailor songs of sea-chested men.

I tired of watching the spiritless performance, and went aft on an
exploring trip along the slender bridge. It was a beautiful structure,
strong yet light, traversing the length of the ship in three aerial
leaps. It spanned from the forecastle-head to the forecastle-house, next
to the 'midship house, and then to the poop. The poop, which was