ng side-wind, will sometimes so alter the
influencing forces that the helm has to be carried steadily on one
side, to correct the ship's disposition to turn to that side. She is
then said to carry weather helm or lee helm, as the case may be; and
the knowing ones used to assert noticeable differences of sailing in
certain conditions. In many ships to carry a little weather helm was
thought advantageous, and it was told of a certain deck-officer--he
who repeated the story to me made the late Admiral Porter the
hero--that the ship being found to sail faster in his watch than in
any other, the commander sent for him and asked the reason. "Well,
sir," replied the lieutenant, "I will tell you my secret. As soon as
the officer I relieve is gone below and out of sight, while the watch
is mustering, I walk forward, look round at things generally, and say
casually to the captain of the forecastle: 'Just slack off a little of
this jib-sheet.' Then about ten minutes before eight bells, after the
last log of the watch has been hove, while the men are rousing to go
below, I go forward again and say, 'Come here, half a dozen of us, and
get a pull of the jib-sheet;' and I turn the deck over to my relief
with the jib well flattened in." In result, the frigate during his
watch, and his only, carried a weather helm. My own experience of
sailing ships was neither prolonged enough nor responsible enough to
estimate just what weight to attach to these impressions, but they
existed; and in any case, as the helm varying far from amidships
showed something wrong, the question was frequent to the helmsman,
"How does she carry her helm?" varied sometimes to, "What sort of helm
does she carry?" Now we had among our green midshipmen one from the
West, tall, angular, swarthy, with a coal-black eye which had a trick
of cocking up and out, giving a queer, perplexed, yet defiant cast to
his countenance; moreover, he stuttered a little, not from
imperfection of organs, but from nervous excitability. We had also a
lieutenant from far down East, red-haired, sanguine of complexion,
bony of structure, who had a gesture of tossing his hair and head
back, and looking tremendously leonine and master of the
situation--monarch of all he surveyed. The two were naturally
antagonistic, as was amusingly shown more than once; but on this
occasion the midshipman was at the "lee wheel," not himself steering,
but helping the steersman in the manual labor. To him the lie