Swimming is an outcome of nature’s laws.
It is easy to learn to swim, and hence,
The main requisition is confidence,
Men cannot do it—at least so they say—
Till they’ve been taught by those who know the way.
How do brutes learn?—swim splendidly they can—
Nature guides them, and nature teaches man,
Minus teaching, lower animals swim.
The training they get is just “a throw in!”
I have had a good deal of experience in the matter and my advice to any person swimming towards heavy seas is this—When a large wave is coming, don’t wait till it breaks on you, dive under it to save being struck and carried away. On the other hand, if swimming with the seas—that is, in the direction in which they are going—and a larger one than usual is coming along behind you, turn round, face it, and dive as in the former case. I don’t know whether Shakespeare could swim, or not, but in his play of “The Tempest” he describes exactly the mode of procedure in rough water, thus—