"No," said the captain. "If you draw even a whiplash through the water, you will find that it draws much harder than it does on the grass; and if a boy's kite were to fall upon a pond at a great distance from the shore, I don't think he could draw it in by the string. The string would break, on account of the friction of the string and of the kite in the water. Sometimes, in naval battles, when a ship is pretending to try to escape, in order to entice another ship to follow her, away from the rest of the fleet, they tow a rope behind, and this rope, dragging in the water, retards the ship, and prevents her from going very fast, notwithstanding that all the sails are set, and she seems to be sailing as fast as she can."
"That's a curious way of doing it," said Rollo; "isn't it, Jennie?"
Jennie thought that it was a very curious way indeed.
"There is no difficulty," said the captain, resuming his explanations, "in finding the depth of the sea in harbors and bays, or at any place near the shore; for in all such places it is usually much less than a hundred fathoms. So when in a dark night, or in a fog, the ship is driven by the wind in a direction where they know there is land, they sound often; and when they find that the water is shoal enough, they let go the anchor."
"And so the anchor holds them," said Jennie, "I suppose, and keeps them from going against the land."
"Yes," said the captain, "generally, but not always. Sometimes the bottom is of smooth rock, or of some other hard formation, which the flukes of the anchor cannot penetrate, and then the ship drifts on toward the land, dragging the anchor with her."
"And what do they do in that case?" asked Rollo.
"Very often there is nothing that they can do," said the captain, "except to let out more cable, cautiously, so as to give the anchor a better chance to catch in some cleft or crevice in the bottom. Sometimes it does catch in this manner, and then the ship is stopped, and, for a time, the people on board think they are safe."
"And are they safe?" asked Rollo.
"Perhaps so," replied the captain; "and yet there is still some danger. The anchor may have caught at a place where the cable passes over the edge of a sharp rock, which soon cuts it off, in consequence of the motion. Then the ship must go on shore.