“A bowline never grips a drowning man and never slips. But it has to be made in its order: if the working end does not round the standing part before it comes back to the bight, that is no bowline, it is a knot that shakes loose the moment it takes a weight.”
There is a man holding on to the side of the hull and a hawser in your hand. The knot this calls for neither grips nor slips, and it is always made the same way: five moves in an order that admits no change. Any other order gives a knot that looks like a knot until somebody hangs from it.
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