old it snug to my neck. So rapidly had the summer gone and winter
come again?

By nightfall we were far out at sea, with no land in sight. No telegrams
could come here, no letters, no news. This was an uplifting thought. It
was still more uplifting to reflect that the millions of harassed people
on shore behind us were suffering just as usual.

The next day brought us into the midst of the Atlantic solitudes--out
of smoke-colored sounding into fathomless deep blue; no ships visible
anywhere over the wide ocean; no company but Mother Carey's chickens
wheeling, darting, skimming the waves in the sun. There were some
seafaring men among the passengers, and conversation drifted into matter
concerning ships and sailors. One said that "true as the needle to the
pole" was a bad figure, since the needle seldom pointed to the pole. He
said a ship's compass was not faithful to any particular point, but was
the most fickle and treacherous of the servants of man. It was forever
changing. It changed every day in the year; consequently the amount of
the daily variation had to be ciphered out and allowance made for it,
else the mariner would go utterly astray. Another said there was a vast
fortune waiting for the genius who should invent a compass that would
not be affected by the local influences of an iron ship. He said there
was only one creature more fickle than a wooden ship's compass, and that
was the compass of an iron ship. Then came reference to the well known
fact that an experienced mariner can look at the compass of a new iron
vessel, thousands of mile from her birthplace, and tell which way her
head was pointing when she was in process of building.

Now an ancient whale-ship master fell to talking about the sort of crews
they used to have in his early days. Said he:

"Sometimes we'd have a batch of college students Queer lot. Ignorant?
Why, they didn't know the catheads from the main brace. But if you took
them for fools you'd get bit, sure. They'd learn more in a month than
another man would in a year. We had one, once, in the Mary Ann, that
came aboard with gold spectacles on. And besides, he was rigged out from
main truck to keelson in the nobbiest clothes that ever saw a fo'castle.
He had a chestful, too: cloaks, and broadcloth coats, and velvet vests;
everything swell, you know; and didn't the saltwater fix them out for
him? I guess not! Well, going to sea, the mate told him to go aloft and
help shake out the fore