I remembered the two mates, the super-efficiency, mental and physical, of Mr.Mellaire and Mr.Pike--could they make this human wreckage do it?
They, at least, evinced no doubts of their ability.

The sea?
If this feat of mastery were possible, then clear it was that I knew nothing of the sea.
I looked back at the misshapen, starved, sick, stumbling hulks of men who trod the dreary round of the windlass.

Mr.Pike was right.

These were not the brisk, devilish, able-bodied men who manned the ships of the old clipper-ship days; who fought their officers, who had the points of their sheath-knives broken off, who killed and were killed, but who did their work as men.

These men, these shambling carcasses at the windlass--I looked, and looked, and vainly I strove to conjure the vision of them swinging aloft in rack and storm, "clearing the raffle," as Kipling puts it, "with their clasp knives in their teeth." Why didn't they sing a chanty as they hove the anchor up?
In the old days, as I had read, the anchor always came up to the rollicking sailor songs of sea-chested men.
I tired of watching the spiritless performance, and went aft on an exploring trip along the slender bridge.