ready established by the anchor's fall through a hundred
feet, of course drags after it all that lies unstoppered within. I
need not tell those who have witnessed such a commotion that the
orderly silence of a ship of war breaks down somewhat. Every one who
has any right to speak shouts, and repeats, in rapid succession,
"Haul-to that chain! Why the something or other don't you haul-to?"
while the unhappy compressor-men, saving their own wind to help their
arms, struggle wildly with the situation, under a storm of obloquy.
The admiral--by this time we had admirals--was a singular man,
something of a lawyer, acute, thinking he knew just how far he might
go in any case, and given at times to taking liberties with
subordinates, which were not to them always as humorous as they seemed
to him. In this instance he miscalculated somewhat. He was on deck at
the moment, and when the chain had been at last stopped and secured,
he said to the captain, "Alfred, send for the young man in charge of
those chains, and give him a good setting-down. Ask him what he means
by letting such things happen. Ride him down like a main-tack,
Alfred--like the main-tack!" The main-tack is the chief rope
controlling the biggest sail in the ship, and at times, close on the
wind, it has to be got down into place by the brute force of half a
hundred men, inch by inch, pull by pull. That is called riding down,
and is clearly a process the reverse of conciliatory. The Dutchman was
sent for, and soon his questioning blue eyes appeared over the hatch
coaming. Alfred--as my own name is Alfred, I may explain that I was
not that captain--Alfred was a mild person, and clearly did not like
his job; he could not have come up to the admiral's standard. The
latter saw it, and intervened: "Perhaps you had better leave it to me.
I'll settle him." Fixing his eyes on the offender, he said, sternly,
"What do you mean by this, sir? Why the h--l did you not stop that
chain?" This exordium was doubtless the prelude to a fit oratorical
display; but the culprit, looking quietly at him, replied, simply,
"How the h--l could I?" This was a shift of wind for which the admiral
was unprepared. He was taken flat back, like a screaming child
receiving a glass of cold water in his face. After a moment's
hesitation he turned to the captain, and said meekly, yet with evident
humorous consciousness of a checkmate, "That's true, Alfred; how the
h--l could he?"

Still, while the defence