The cradle of oversea traffic and of the art of naval¹ combats, the Mediterranean², apart from all the associations of adventure and glory, the common heritage of all mankind, makes a tender appeal to a seaman³. It has sheltered the infancy⁴ of his craft. He looks upon it as a man may look at a vast nursery in an old, old mansion⁵ where innumerable generations of his own people have learned to walk. I say his own people because, in a sense, all sailors belong to one family: all are descended⁶ from that adventurous⁷ and shaggy ancestor who, bestriding a shapeless log and paddling with a crooked⁸ branch, accomplished⁹ the first coasting-trip in a sheltered bay ringing with the admiring howls of his tribe. It is a matter of regret that all those brothers in craft and feeling, whose generations have learned to walk a ship’s deck in that nursery, have been also more than once fiercely engaged in cutting each other’s throats there. But life, apparently¹⁰, has such exigencies¹¹. Without human propensity¹² to murder and other sorts of unrighteousness there would have been no historical heroism¹³. It is a consoling reflection. And then, if one examines

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