A ship in dock, surrounded by quays¹ and the walls of warehouses³, has the appearance of a prisoner meditating⁴ upon freedom in the sadness of a free spirit put under restraint. Chain cables and stout⁵ ropes keep her bound to stone posts at the edge of a paved shore, and a berthing-master, with brass⁷ buttons on his coat, walks about like a weather-beaten and ruddy gaoler, casting jealous, watchful⁸ glances upon the moorings that fetter⁹ a ship lying passive and still and safe, as if lost in deep regrets of her days of liberty and danger on the sea.

The swarm¹⁰ of renegades — dock-masters, berthing-masters, gatemen, and such like — appear to nurse an immense distrust of the captive ship’s resignation. There never seem chains and ropes enough to satisfy their minds concerned with the safe binding¹¹ of free ships to the strong, muddy, enslaved earth. “You had better put another bight of a hawser¹² astern, Mr. Mate,” is the usual phrase in their mouth. I brand them for renegades, because most of them have been sailors in their time. As if the infirmities of old age — the gray hair, the wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, and the knotted veins¹³ of the hands — were the symptoms of moral poison, they prowl about the quays with an underhand air of gloating over the broken spirit of noble captives. They want more fenders, more breasting-ropes; they want more springs, more

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