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Then, after the little meeting is over, and the evening begins to fall, the fascinating landsman will stroll on the deck for a few minutes, until the smack's boats come over the great seas to bear away the visitors; all his gossip is like a revelation to the rude, good-hearted creatures, and his words filter from vessel to vessel; his very accent and tone are remembered; and when the hoarse salute "God bless you!" sounds over the sea, as the boats go away, you may be sure that the fishers utter their blessing with sincere fervour.
On my arrival in England I applied to Captain Washington, Hydrographer to the Admiralty, and he promptly furnished the document for publication by the Royal Geographical Society. The river between Mazaro and the sea must therefore be judged of from the testimony of one more competent to decide on its merits than a mere landsman like myself.
Procuring a wherry, and a boy to row it, he had boarded the Missisque as she passed up the lake; and, though the sloop was not a passenger-boat, Captain John had consented to land him at Shoreham. Mr. Randall was a landsman, and had a proper respect for squalls and tempests, even on a fresh-water lake.
Reenforcing the bucko mate was the tradition that the sailor was a dog, a different human species from the landsman, without laws and usages to protect him.
It is not easy to make a landsman understand the confidence which a sailor feels in a rope. Place but a frail and rotten piece of twisted hemp in his hand, and he will risk his person in situations from which he would otherwise recoil in dread.
As for young men, they are mostly fools, and they talk of love with a vast deal of swagger and bravery, laughing it to scorn, as a landsman talks of seasickness, telling you it is nothing but an impression and a mere lack of courage, till one day the land-bred boaster puts to sea in a Channel steamer, and experiences a new sensation, and becomes a very sick man indeed before he is out of sight of Dover cliffs.
Suddenly Barebone rose to his feet, hauled in hand over hand, and when the dinghy was near enough, leaped across two yards of water to her gunwale. The Captain heard the thud of his feet on the thwart, and looking back over his shoulder saw and understood in a flash of thought. But even then he did not understand that Loo was aught else but a landsman half-recovered from sea-sickness.
During the time I remained in the "Southern Cross," he never in any way, to the best of my recollection, interfered in the navigation or management of the vessel; but I came to know almost at once that his general planning of a voyage, knowledge of local courses and distances, the method by which it could be done most quickly and advantageously, and the time required to do it in, were thorough; and, in fact, I suppose, that almost without knowing it, in all this I was his pupil, and to the last felt the comfort of his advice or assistance, as, e.g., when looking out together from aloft he has seen shoal water more quickly than myself, or has decided whether certain doubtful appearances ahead were or were not sufficient to make us alter our course, &c.; and always speaking as no one who was what sailors call a landsman could have done.
"You will have to take your chances when you come to the entrance of the bay," said Colonel Passford, nervously. "This cargo is worth a fortune, and we are in sore need of the supplies which its value will purchase for us." "I think I understand the matter perfectly, colonel," replied Lonley, who did not seem to take kindly to any advice from a landsman.
If you be landsman, come down the strand; If you be sailor, come up the sand; If you be angel, come from the sky, Look in my glass, and pass me by; Look in my glass, and go from the shore; Leave me, but love me for evermore."
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