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"Better both on ye go back, I reckon," growled one of the sailors; "this ain't no job for a landsman." Nothing heeding this rebuff, the two soldiers followed up the steep rock, George giving a hand at the worst spots to his friend and superior. Up, up, the scaling party mounted, the business becoming every moment more difficult and more full of danger.

By tongue or pen he can make a landsman live that strange and stirring voyage over with him; make him see it all and feel it all. But if he wait? If he make ten voyages in succession what then? Why, the thing has lost color, snap, surprise; and has become commonplace. The man would have nothing to tell that would quicken a landsman's pulse.

And as we pitched and floundered southward they gambled and fought, were brutal to one another, argued and wrangled loudly, until we protested at the uproar. There's no romance about the sea in a small sailing ship as I saw it. The romance is in the mind of the landsman dreamer.

Where the work went on in the valley I had a couple of tents for my gang of navvies, some of whom were sailors. I always found these excellent workers, and specially handy and clever in many ways, where a mere landsman would be at fault. I worked with them, and shared everything as one of themselves, even to a single nip of rum I allowed to each man once a day.

A number of men left their stations suddenly without permission, and seemed to take great interest in the sea just over the rail. As the sun sank, the wind rose, and with it came rain rain in sheets the "wettest" kind of rain. When the port watch was relieved at eight o'clock, even the veriest landsman among us could tell that the situation was becoming serious.

Of course in a tourney with the Inverness, there could be only one result. The wharf heaved up and went over like an unhorsed knight accompanied by a terrible creaking and ripping and groaning as of armour being rent asunder. Disaster always stripped Captain Jimmie of his nautical cloak and left him the true landsman.

But it is impossible to deceive the practised eye in these matters; and while I supposed myself to be looking as salt as Neptune himself, I was, no doubt, known for a landsman by every one on board as soon as I hove in sight. A sailor has a peculiar cut to his clothes, and a way of wearing them which a green hand can never get.

There is no landsman in the ship now exposed to its dangers. All on board are familiar with the sea have spent years upon it. Yet is there fear in their hearts and pallor on their cheeks, as their eyes turn to that belt of white frothy water between them and the land, trending north and south beyond the range of vision.

Every seaman knows how impossible it is for an ordinary landsman to draw anything like a faithful representation of a ship, however picturesque a production the thing might appear to him. We are bound, therefore, to look with grave suspicion on the performances of the draughtsmen of those early days; who had but a poor idea of drawing the objects they had constantly before their eyes.

It is a well-known fact that an immense proportion of boat accidents would never happen if people held the sheet in their hands instead of making it fast; and yet, unless it be some martinet of a professional mariner or some landsman with shattered nerves, every one of God's creatures makes it fast. A strange instance of man's unconcern and brazen boldness in the face of death!