spend more time on board than their multifarious occupations allow most owners of yachts to devote to seafaring, he must know that it is idle for him to pretend to compete either in seamanship or experience with the man whom he employs to sail his vessel for him. In short, he remains an amateur to the end of the chapter, and, if he is sensible and honest, is always ready to acknowledge himself the disciple of the professional sailor. But in single-handed boat sailing this humiliating sense of dependence and inferiority disappears. For the first time in his life, no matter how frequent may have been his cruises on bigger vessels, he finds himself the _bona fide_ master of his own ship, with that delightful sense of unlimited responsibility and co-extensive omnipotence which is the acme of human enjoyment. The smallness of his craft does not in the slightest degree diminish the sense of his importance and dignity; indeed, there is no reason why it should. All the problems which task the intelligence and knowledge of the captain of a thousand-tonner during the various contingencies of its nautical manoeuvres have to be dealt with by him with equal promptness and precision. Anchored in a hot tideway and amongst a crowd of other shipping, he has perhaps a more difficult job to execute in avoiding disaster when getting under way or picking up his moorings than often confronts under similar circumstances the leviathans of the deep; and his honour is equally engaged in avoiding the slightest graze or sixpence worth of injury either to himself or his neighbours as would be the case were a court-martial or a lawsuit and 5,000_l_. damages involved in the misadventure. The same pleasurable sentiments stimulate his faculties when encountering the heavy weather which waits him outside; for, though the seas he encounters may not be quite so large as Atlantic rollers, nor break so dangerously as in the Pentland Firth, they are sufficiently formidable in proportion to the size of his craft to require extremely careful steering, and probably an immediate reduction of canvas under conditions of some difficulty.