Quotation from: The Cruise of the Snark

Written by: Jack London


The acquisition of the knowledge of navigation has a strange effect
on the minds of men. The average navigator speaks of navigation
with deep respect. To the layman navigation is a deed and awful
mystery, which feeling has been generated in him by the deep and
awful respect for navigation that the layman has seen displayed by
navigators. I have known frank, ingenuous, and modest young men,
open as the day, to learn navigation and at once betray
secretiveness, reserve, and self-importance as if they had achieved
some tremendous intellectual attainment. The average navigator
impresses the layman as a priest of some holy rite. With bated
breath, the amateur yachtsman navigator invites one in to look at
his chronometer. And so it was that our friends suffered such
apprehension at our sailing without a navigator.

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