This, this was life, strenuous, stern, full of fearful hardship, yet wonderful bewitching joy—the life which sharpens the faculties, quickens the wits, and hardens the backbone of a man, producing at the same time a self-reliance not to be come at by any other method.
It is the strife, the struggle, the fierce endeavour which, once experienced, make the quieter, more tranquil paths of life seem dull and insipid.
It is the sense of safety in this life which palls upon men and drives adventurers forth into the world, seeking anything that will arouse their natures, grown sluggish and torpid in the monotony of the modern daily round.
Some go and shoot big game, others climb mountains, a few explore, and some rush gaily into foreign wars, all for the same reason, to shake off the choking folds of security's sombre cloak and feel the thrill of danger.
What is there to compare with this exulting feeling, this tasting of the juice of peril in realms where the spice of life, the sweets of a hard-fought victory, are known to the full?
In these realms the qualities of nerve and pluck are at a premium, and he who has not sufficient goes under, broken and tossed aside in swift defeat. In these realms a man is thoroughly tested and tempered in the fire, and he must be "clean strain" or he won't survive the ordeal.
Jack gazed with a look of defiance into the heart of the storm.
"Fight me, you raging sea and howling wind," he cried in his exultation; "overcome me, if it is so fated, but I will give you a stiff battle. All my cunning, all my nerve, all my endurance are ready to my call. Exhaust them if you can, break them down, but first you have to break my spirit, strain it, tear it, beat upon it, crush it down; and if you are able to destroy it, you can take my useless body also. Blow, ye winds; smite me, O sea, for I am ready!" And he hummed the famous chanty: