It's naked child against hungry wolf; it's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck; it's walking on a string across a gulf with millstones fore-and-aft about your neck; but the thing is daily done by manyand many a one; and we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.

-Davidson,John
  Ballads and Songs,'Thirty Bob a Week', stanza16.

The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but he had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck Shone round him o'er the dead.

-Hemans, Felicia ne¤  e Browne
  'Casabianca'.

I have no intention of rearranging the furniture on the deck of theTitanic.

-Morton, Rogers Clark Ballard
  On declining to rescue President Ford's disastrous election campaign.