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WO Years Before the Mast" has become a classic of sea travel as Eöthen" and Gautier's "Italia" have become classics of land travel. compares it with these books, with Lamartine's "Voyage en Orient," or with the descriptive passages in Pierre Loti's "Iceland Fisherman" or Mr. Hichens's "Garden of Allah," stories in which the landscape forms part of the substance of the tale, it seems somewhat bare and lacking in color. It holds its unique place, however, largely because it lacks the calculated literary effect, the highly sophisticated use of the stage-setting; it is a narrative of rare simplicity and directness. The writer had a great background, and wisely refrained from trying to paint it; he let it occur, to recall Oscar Wilde. He kept out of the way and let the sea make itself visible and audible by a straightforward record of an experience of two years in which it was rarely still or silent. The book is not so much the record of what a man saw and felt as a register of aspects and moods made by the sea itself. In the elemental relations of men with nature, simplicity is really enforced by the vastness of the fact; one can hardly imagine a rhetorical description of creation in

Two Years Before the Mast. By Richard H. Dana, Jr. With an Introduction by Sir Wilfred Grenfell, and Illustrations by Charles Pears. The Macmillan Company, New York.

place of the almost miraculous simplicity of Genesis.

This is saying that "Two Years Before the Mast," like "Robinson Crusoe" and "Treasure Island," is a piece of high art; a book that will seem contemporaneous with many generations of boys because it bears the stamp of no particular fashion of writing. It will never go out of fashion, as "Sir Charles Grandison" has done, because it was never in fashion. It was published in 1840, but there is nothing of 1840 about it except some conditions of life on old-time sailing vessels. Many of the conditions reported in the book have ceased to exist, but its deep-going integrity kept it free from the forms and phrases of the time in which it was written.

In this sincerity lies the secret of the fresh description in which the narrative abounds, the sense of the unfolding presence of the sea and the absence of specific effects. Here is a glimpse of the sky in a gale which gains the force of fact because it is put as nearly as possible in words of one syllable: "All this time there was not a cloud to be seen in the sky, day or night; no, not so large as a man's hand. Every morning the sun rose cloudless from the sea, and set again at night, in the sea, in a flood of light. The stars, too, came out of the blue, one after another, night after night, unobscured, and twinkled

as clear as on a still frosty night at home, until the day came upon them. All this time the sea was rolling in immense surges, white with foam, as far as the eye could reach, on every side, for we were now leagues and leagues from shore."

This book has, too, the wide appeal which lies in a story of things which befell a man; for there is no fiction so interesting as the fact when the fact involves big forces, skill, daring, and the immense delight of measuring brains against force and coming off first. It is part of the integrity of this book that though it abounds in technical details it never blunders; it is the work of one of those trained men who put brains in place of experience, and cease to be amateurs almost as soon as they put their hands to a job.

"Two Years Before the Mast was written by a boy just out of college, which makes its simplicity the more remarkable; for we are no more born simple than we are born free and equal; we are born complex, and for most men simplicity, like freedom, is an achievement.

No man could have been born

further from the sailor's habit and way of life than Richard Henry Dana, Jr., to whom the culture of the oldest college town in America was a background, and attendance at the oldest college an inevitable discipline. Compelled by weakened eyesight to leave Harvard in his junior year, Dana joyfully followed a call which he had heard from his childhood and went to sea; and he went on elementary conditions, for he shipped before the mast and was as much a sailor as the oldest tar on the ship. The Pilgrim was a merchantman; the voyage lasted from August, 1834, to September, 1836; the ship doubling Cape Horn, visiting many ports in the Pacific and on the California coast, and returning to Boston, where the young sailor re-entered college, finished his course, entered the Harvard Law School, put his journal into shape, published "Two Years Before the

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Mast" in 1840, and was promptly recognized as a writer who had something to say and knew how to say it. The book was translated into several languages; it has been placed by the British Admiralty on the ships which make up its powerful navy; it is also part of the equipment of every properly provided boy. From its appearance, therefore, it has had a double success; it has secured a place both as a technical and a popular classic.

The book was, however, only an incident in a very honorable and successful career; for Dana became a lawyer of distinction, a lecturer on international law at Harvard, an authority on admiralty law, and a writer of weight on legal subjects. He was one of the founders of the Free Soil party, and was active in State and local politics. In 1859

he made a trip to Cuba, and published his experiences and impressions in a well-written book which never became popular. The closing years of his life were spent in Paris and in different parts of Italy; he died in Rome in January, 1882.

That "Two Years Before the Mast" should appeal to Dr. Grenfell was inevitable; and that he should value it as a vital force for manliness was also inevitable, for Dr. Grenfell is an expert and daring sailor, and the sum and substance of his estimate of the book is found in the closing sentence of his Introduction: "For my part, I would far rather have my boy familiar with it than with many of the hundred best books.'" And Mr. Charles Pears has achieved the difficult success of really illustrating the narrative, not only with stirring and graphic power, but with an accuracy akin to that of the text. A man who has followed the sea twenty-four years studied the illustrations with care until he came upon the ship, every sail set, against an almost incredibly red sky. Looking at it a moment, he said: "I have never seen a sky like that, but this man is so exact that I believe he saw it."

Before the Mast"

watch, too, seemed very busy tramping about decks, and singing out at the ropes. A sailor can always tell, by the sound, what sail is coming in, and in a short time we heard the top-gallant-sails come in, one after another and then the flying jib. This seemed to ease

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her a good deal, and we were fast going off to the land of Nod, when-bang, bang, bangon the scuttle, and " All hands, reef topsails, ahoy!" started us out of our berths; and, it not being very cold weather, we had nothing extra to put on, and were soon on deck. shall never forget the fineness of the sight. It was a clear and rather a chilly night; the stars were twinkling with an intense bright ness, and as far as the eye could reach, there was not a cloud to be seen. The horizon met the sea in a defined line. A painter could not have painted so clear a sky. There was not a speck upon it. Yet it was blowing great guns from the northwest. When you can see a cloud to windward, you feel that there is a place for the wind to come from; but here, it seemed to come from nowhere. No person could have told, from the heavens, by their eyesight alone, that it was not a still summer's night. One reef after another, we took in the topsails, and before we could get them hoisted up, we heard a sound like a short, quick rattling of thunder, and the jib was blown to atoms out of the bolt-rope. We got the topsails set, and the fragments of the jib stowed away, and the fore top-mast stay-sail set in its place, when the great mainsail gaped open, and the sail ripped from head to foot. "Lay up on that main-yard and furl the sail, before it blows to tatters!" shouted the captain; and in a moment we were up, gathering the remains of it upon the yard. We got it wrapped round the yard, and passed gaskets over it as snugly as possible, and were just on deck again, when, with another loud rent, which was heard throughout the ship, the fore topsail, which had been double-reefed, split in two, athwartships, just below the reef-band, from earing to earing. Here again it was down yard, haul out reeftackles, and lay out upon the yard for reefing. By hauling the reef-tackles chock-a-block, we took the strain from the other earings, and, passing the close-reef earing and knotting the points carefully, we succeeded in setting the sail, close-reefed.

We had but just got the rigging coiled up, and were waiting to hear "Go below the watch!" when the main royal worked loose from the gaskets, and blew directly out to leeward, flapping, and shaking the mast like a wand. Here was a job for somebody. The royal must come in or be cut adrift, or the mast would be snapped short off. All the light hands in the starboard watch were sent up, one after another, but they could do

nothing with it. At length, John, the tall Frenchman, the head of the starboard watch (and a better sailor never stepped upon a deck), sprang aloft, and, by the help of his long arms and legs, succeeded, after a hard struggle the sail blowing over the yard-arm to leeward, and the skysail blowing directly over his head-in smothering it, and frapping it, with long pieces of sinnet. He came very near being blown or shaken from the yard, several times, but he was a true sailor, every finger a fish-hook. Having made the sail snug, he prepared to send the yard down, which was a long and difficult job; for frequently he was obliged to stop and hold on with all his might, for several minutes, the ship pitching so as to make it impossible to do anything else at that height. The yard at length came down safe, and after it the fore and mizen royal-yards were sent down. All hands were then sent aloft, and for an hour or two we were hard at work, making the booms well fast; unreeving the studding-sail and royal and skysail gear; getting rolling-ropes on the yards; setting up the weather breast-backstays; and making other preparations for a storm. It was a

fine night for a gale; just cool and bracing enough for quick work, without being cold, and as bright as day. It was sport to have a gale in such weather as this. Yet it blew like a hurricane. The wind seemed to come with a spite, an edge to it, which threatened to scrape us off the yards. The mere force of the wind was greater than I had ever seen it before; but darkness, cold, and wet are the worst parts of a storm, to a sailor.

Having got on deck again, we looked round to see what time of night it was, and whose watch. In a few minutes the man at the wheel struck four bells, and we found that the other watch was out, and our own half out. Accordingly, the starboard watch went below, and left the ship to us for a couple of hours, yet with orders to stand by for a call.

Hardly had they got below, before away went the fore top-mast stay-sail, blown to ribands. This was a small sail, which we could manage in the watch, so that we were not obliged to call up the other watch. We laid out upon the bowsprit, where we were under water half the time, and took in the fragments of the sail, and as she must have some head sail on her, prepared to bend another stay-sail. We got the new one out, into the nettings; seized on the tack, sheets,