Next morning the skipper hardly puts his head out before he yells the welcome order to set the main lower topsail--from the lee yardarm of which a dozen men had nearly gone to Davy Jones's locker only yesterday. He takes a look round; then orders up reefed foresail and the three upper topsails, also reefed. Up goes the watch aloft and lays out on the yard. 'Ready?' comes the shouted {128} query from the bunt. 'Ay, ay, sir!' 'Haul out to windward!' _Eh--hai, o--ho, o--ho--oh_! 'Far enough, sir?' 'Haul out to leeward!' _Eh--hai, o--ho, o--ho--oh_! 'That'll do! Tie her up and don't miss any points!' 'Right-oh! Lay down from aloft and set the sail!' _Yo--ho, yo--hai, yo--ho--oh_! Then the chanty rises from the swaying men, rises and falls, in wavering bursts of sound, as if the gale was whirling it about: Blow the man down, blow the man down, 'Way-ho! Blow the man down. Blow the man down from Liverpool town; Give us some wind to blow the man down. And so the gallant ship goes outward-bound; and homeward-bound the same. At last she's back in Halifax, after a series of adventures that would set an ordinary landsman up for life. But the only thing the Nova Scotian papers say of her is this: 'Arrived from sea with general cargo--ship _Victoria_, John Smith, master, ninety days from Valparaiso. All well.' No mention of that terrible Antarctic hurricane? No 'heroes'? No heroics? It's all in the day's work there. {129} CHAPTER VIII STEAMERS Steamers and all other machine-driven craft are of very much greater importance to Canada now than canoes and sailing craft together. But their story can be told in a chapter no longer than the one devoted to canoes alone; and this for several reasons. The tale of the canoe begins somewhere in the immemorial past and is still being told to-day. The story of the sailing ship is not so old as this. But it is as old as the history of Canada. It is inseparably connected with Canada's fortunes in peace and war. It is Canada's best sea story of the recent past. And, to a far greater extent than the tale of the canoe, it is also a story of the present and the immediate future. Moreover, sailing craft helped to make turning points of Canadian history as only a single steamer ever has. Sailing craft made Canada known distinctively among every great seafaring people as steamers never have. {130} And while the building, ownership, and actual navigation of sailing craft once made Canada fourth among the shipping countries of the world, the change to steam and steel, coinciding with the destruction of the handiest timber and the development of inland forms of business, put no less than eight successful rivals ahead of her.