The Mirror of the Sea

perfectly obvious truism brings me at once to the subject of the

sts" his anchor. Now, an anchor is never cast, and to take a liberty with technical

s, of no particular expression or shape - just hooks) - an anchor of yesterday is in its way a most efficient instrument. To its perfection its size bears witness, for there is no other appliance so small for the great work it has to do. Look at the anchors hanging from the cat-heads of

s befall its ship, that anchor is "lost." The honest, rough piece of iron, so simple in appearance, has more parts than the human body has limbs: the ring,

for its work is already overboard, and is not thrown over, but simply allowed to fall. It hangs from the ship's side at the end of a heavy, projecting timber called the cat-head, in the bight of a short, th

of water on which she floats. A lashed boat, a spare spar, a cask or what not secured about the decks, is "cast adrift" when it

the newspapers of the greatest maritime country in the world. "The fleet anchored at Spithead": can anyone want a better sentence for brevity and seamanlike ring? But the "cast-anchor" trick, with its affectation of being a sea-phrase - for why not write just as well "threw anchor," "flung anchor," or