etter
understood; and, lastly, compasses indicate more truly the direction in
which the ship is sailing. Not that compasses themselves are at fault,
but that--as papa explained to us--every compass of a ship is influenced
by the iron on board the vessel. Now, before a ship sails she is swung
round in all directions, so that the exact amount of the influence
exercised by the iron is ascertained, and allowance made accordingly.
There are also a large number of careful pilots on the look-out for
ships coming up Channel. However, after a long course of thick weather
and contrary winds, the most experienced master is unable to be certain
of his true position; and, notwithstanding all the precautions taken,
ships are sometimes carried out of their course, or caught on a lee
shore, and driven on the rocks and wrecked. I have been speaking of
sailing vessels. Steamers have an advantage; but even they, from the
effects of currents and tides, sometimes get out of their course, or an
accident happens to the machinery, or a gale comes on and drives them,
in spite of all efforts of paddle or screw, on shore.

We kept inside the Race, which in stormy weather, with the wind meeting
the tide, is excessively dangerous. The seas rise up as if some power
is moving the water from beneath, and letting it suddenly fall down
again. When it thus falls down on the deck of a small vessel, all
steerage-way being lost, she is drifted along, utterly helpless, by the
tide, and if heavily laden, possibly sent to the bottom. Vessels,
however, when passing the Bill of Portland, keep outside the Race, or,
when the wind is off the land, close to the shore, as we were doing.
When they are caught by a current in a calm, they are drifted through
it.

The men at the lighthouses have on several occasions seen a vessel
suddenly disappear beneath the foaming water, which, leaping up, had
carried her to the bottom exactly as if she had been dragged down by the
tentacula of some marine monster.

Near the end of the Bill are two white towers, of different heights, one
thirty-two and the other eighty-six feet high. They are the
lighthouses, and in each of them is a bright fixed light. They stand
over fifteen hundred feet apart, and both lights can be seen at a great
distance,--the highest being visible four miles further off than the
lowest.

Close to the summit of the cliffs stand two castles, overlooking the
wide expanse of the Channel. One, surro