He has her on a slant of the wind, and he makes out
between the harbour piers. I am supposing, for the sake of good luck,
that it is not blowing bang down the harbour mouth, nor, for the matter
of that, bang out of it. I am supposing, for the sake of good luck to
this venture, that in weighing anchor you have the wind so that you can
sail with it full and by, or freer still, right past the walls until you
are well into the tide outside. You may tell me that you are so rich and
your boat is so big that there have been times when you have anchored in
the very open, and that all this does not apply to you. Why, then, your
thoughts do not apply to me nor to the little boat I have in mind.
In the weighing of anchor and the taking of adventure and of the sea
there is an exact parallel to anything that any man can do in the
beginning of any human thing, from his momentous setting out upon his
life in early manhood to the least decision of his present passing day.
It is a very proper emblem of a beginning. It may lead him to that kind
of muddle and set-back which attaches only to beginnings, or it may get
him fairly into the weather, and yet he may find, a little way outside,
that he has to run for it, or to beat back to harbour. Or, more
generously, it may lead him to a long and steady cruise in which he
shall find profit and make distant rivers and continue to increase his
log by one good landfall after another.
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