SAILING ALONE AROUND THE WORLD
By Captain Joshua Slocum

TO THE ONE WHO SAID: "THE 'SPRAY' WILL COME BACK."

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

A blue-nose ancestry with Yankee proclivities - Youthful fondness
for the sea - Master of the ship Northern Light - Loss of the
Aquidneck - Return home from Brazil in the canoe Liberdade - The
gift of a "ship" - The rebuilding of the Spray - Conundrums in
regard to finance and calking - The launching of the Spray.

CHAPTER II

Failure as a fisherman - A voyage around the world projected - From
Boston to Gloucester - Fitting out for the ocean voyage - Half of a
dory for a ship's boat - The run from Gloucester to Nova Scotia - A
shaking up in home waters - Among old friends.

CHAPTER III

Good-by to the American coast - Off Sable Island in a fog - In the
open sea - The man in the moon takes an interest in the voyage -
The first fit of loneliness - The Spray encounters La Vaguisa - A
bottle of wine from the Spaniard - A bout of words with the captain
of the Java - The steamship Olympia spoken - Arrival at the
Azores, or not Atkinson.

CHAPTER IV

Squally weather in the Azores - High living - Delirious from cheese
and plums - The pilot of the Pinta - At Gibraltar - Compliments
exchanged with the British navy - A picnic on the Morocco shore.

CHAPTER V

Sailing from Gibraltar with the assistance of her Majesty's tug -
The Spray's course changed from the Suez Canal to Cape Horn -
Chased by a Moorish pirate - A comparison with Columbus - The
Canary Islands - The Cape Verde Islands - Sea life - Arrival at
Pernambuco - A bill against the Brazilian government - Preparing
for the stormy weather of the cape.

SAILING ALONE AROUND THE WORLD

CHAPTER I

A blue-nose ancestry with Yankee proclivities - Youthful fondness
for the sea - Master of the ship Northern Light - Loss of the
Aquidneck - Return home from Brazil in the canoe Liberdade - The
gift of a "ship" - The rebuilding of the Spray -Conundrums in
regard to finance and calking - The launching of the Spray .

In the fair land of Nova Scotia, a maritime province, there is a
ridge called North Mountain, overlooking the Bay of Fundy on one
side and the fertile Annapolis valley on the other. On the northern
slope of the range grows the hardy spruce-tree, well adapted for
ship-timbers, of which many vessels of all classes have been built.
The people of this coast, hardy, robust, and strong, are disposed
to compete in the world's commerce, and it is nothing against the
master mariner if the birthplace mentioned on his certificate be
Nova Scotia. I was born in a cold spot, on coldest North Mountain,
on a cold February 20, though I am a citizen of the United States -
a naturalized Yankee, if it may be said that Nova Scotians are not
Yankees in the truest sense of the word. On both sides my family
were sailors; and if any Slocum should be found not seafaring, he
will show at least an inclination to whittle models of boats and
contemplate voyages. My father was the sort of man who, if wrecked
on a desolate island, would find his way home, if he had a jack-
knife and could find a tree. He was a good judge of a boat, but the
old clay farm which some calamity made his was an anchor to him. He
was not afraid of a capful of wind, and he never took a back seat
at a camp-meeting or a good, old-fashioned revival.

As for myself, the wonderful sea charmed me from the first. At the
age of eight I had already been afloat along with other boys on the
bay, with chances greatly in favor of being drowned. When a lad I
filled the important post of cook on a fishing-schooner; but I was
not long in the galley, for the crew mutinied at the appearance of
my first duff, and "chucked me out" before I had a chance to shine
as a culinary artist. The next step toward the goal of happiness
found me before the mast in a full-rigged ship bound on a foreign
voyage. Thus I came "over the bows," and not in through the cabin
windows, to the command of a ship.

My best command was that of the magnificent ship Northern Light ,
of which I was part-owner. I had a right to be proud of her, for at
that time - in the eighties - she was the finest American sailing-
vessel afloat. Afterward I owned and sailed the Aquidneck , a
little bark which of all man's handiwork seemed to me the nearest
to perfection of beauty, and which in speed, when the wind blew,
asked no favors of steamers, I had been nearly twenty years a
shipmaster when I quit her deck on the coast of Brazil, where she
was wrecked. My home voyage to New York with my family was made in
the canoe Liberdade , without accident.

My voyages were all foreign. I sailed as freighter and trader
principally to China, Australia, and Japan, and among the Spice
Islands. Mine was not the sort of life to make one long to coil up
one's ropes on land, the customs and ways of which I had finally
almost forgotten. And so when times for freighters got bad, as at
last they did, and I tried to quit the sea, what was there for an
old sailor to do? I was born in the breezes, and I had studied the
sea as perhaps few men have studied it, neglecting all else. Next
in attractiveness, after seafaring, came ship-building. I longed to
be master in both professions, and in a small way, in time, I
accomplished my desire. From the decks of stout ships in the worst
gales I had made calculations as to the size and sort of ship
safest for all weather and all seas. Thus the voyage which I am now
to narrate was a natural outcome not only of my love of adventure,
but of my lifelong experience.

One midwinter day of 1892, in Boston, where I had been cast up from
old ocean, so to speak, a year or two before, I was cogitating
whether I should apply for a command, and again eat my bread and
butter on the sea, or go to work at the shipyard, when I met an old acquaintance, a whaling-captain, who said: "Come to Fairhaven and
I'll give you a ship. But," he added, "she wants some repairs." The
captain's terms, when fully explained, were more than satisfactory
to me. They included all the assistance I would require to fit the
craft for sea. I was only too glad to accept, for I had already
found that I could not obtain work in the shipyard without first
paying fifty dollars to a society, and as for a ship to command -
there were not enough ships to go round. Nearly all our tall
vessels had been cut down for coal-barges, and were being
ignominiously towed by the nose from port to port, while many
worthy captains addressed themselves to Sailors' Snug Harbor.

The next day I landed at Fairhaven, opposite New Bedford, and found
that my friend had something of a joke on me. For seven years the
joke had been on him. The "ship" proved to be a very antiquated
sloop called the Spray, which the neighbors declared had been built
in the year 1. She was affectionately propped up in a field, some
distance from salt water, and was covered with canvas. The people
of Fairhaven, I hardly need say, are thrifty and observant. For
seven years they had asked, "I wonder what Captain Eben Pierce is
going to do with the old Spray?" The day I appeared there was a
buzz at the gossip exchange: at last some one had come and was
actually at work on the old Spray. "Breaking her up, I s'pose?"
"No; going to rebuild her." Great was the amazement. "Will it pay?"
was the question which for a year or more I answered by declaring
that I would make it pay.

My ax felled a stout oak-tree near by for a keel, and Farmer
Howard, for a small sum of money, hauled in this and enough timbers
for the frame of the new vessel. I rigged a steam-box and a pot for
a boiler. The timbers for ribs, being straight saplings, were
dressed and steamed till supple, and then bent over a log, where
they were secured till set. Something tangible appeared every day
to show for my labor, and the neighbors made the work sociable. It
was a great day in the Spray shipyard when her new stem was set up
and fastened to the new keel. Whaling-captains came from far to
survey it. With one voice they pronounced it "A 1," and in their
opinion "fit to smash ice." The oldest captain shook my hand warmly
when the breast-hooks were put in, declaring that he could see no
reason why the Spray should not "cut in bow-head" yet off the coast
of Greenland. The much-esteemed stem-piece was from the butt of the
smartest kind of a pasture oak. It afterward split a coral patch in
two at the Keeling Islands, and did not receive a blemish. Better
timber for a ship than pasture white oak never grew. The breast-
hooks, as well as all the ribs, were of this wood, and were steamed
and bent into shape as required. It was hard upon March when I
began work in earnest; the weather was cold; still, there were
plenty of inspectors to back me with advice. When a whaling-captain
hove in sight I just rested on my adz awhile and "gammed" with him.

New Bedford, the home of whaling-captains, is connected with
Fairhaven by a bridge, and the walking is good. They never "worked
along up" to the shipyard too often for me. It was the charming
tales about arctic whaling that inspired me to put a double set of
breast-hooks in the Spray , that she might shunt ice.

The seasons came quickly while I worked. Hardly were the ribs of
the sloop up before apple-trees were in bloom. Then the daisies and
the cherries came soon after. Close by the place where the old
Spray had now dissolved rested the ashes of John Cook, a revered
Pilgrim father. So the new Spray rose from hallowed ground. From
the deck of the new craft I could put out my hand and pick cherries
that grew over the little grave. The planks for the new vessel,
which I soon came to put on, were of Georgia pine an inch and a
half thick. The operation of putting them on was tedious, but, when
on, the calking was easy. The outward edges stood slightly open to
receive the calking, but the inner edges were so close that I could
not see daylight between them. All the butts were fastened by
through bolts, with screw-nuts tightening them to the timbers, so
that there would be no complaint from them. Many bolts with screw-
nuts were used in other parts of the construction, in all about a
thousand. It was my purpose to make my vessel stout and strong.

Now, it is a law in Lloyd's that the Jane repaired all out of the
old until she is entirely new is still the Jane . The Spray changed
her being so gradually that it was hard to say at what point the
old died or the new took birth, and it was no matter. The bulwarks
I built up of white-oak stanchions fourteen inches high, and
covered with seven-eighth-inch white pine. These stanchions,
mortised through a two-inch covering-board, I calked with thin
cedar wedges. I arranged a berth to sleep in, and shelves for small
storage, not forgetting a place for the medicine-chest. In the
midship hold, that is, the space between cabin and galley, under
the deck, was room for provision of water, salt beef, etc., ample
for many months even for Councillor Jackson.

The hull of my vessel being now put together as strongly as wood
and iron could make her, and the various rooms partitioned off, I
set about "calking ship." Grave fears were entertained by some that
at this point I should fail. I myself gave some thought to the
advisability of a "professional calker." The very first blow I
struck on the cotton with the calking-iron, which I thought was
right, many others thought wrong. "It'll crawl!" cried a man from
Marion, passing with a basket of clams on his back. "It'll crawl!"
cried another from West Island, when he saw me driving cotton into
the seams. Bruno simply wagged his tail. Even Mr. Ben J - - , a
noted authority on whaling-ships, whose mind, however, was said to
totter, asked rather confidently if I did not think "it would
crawl." "How fast will it crawl?" cried my old captain friend, who
had been towed by many a lively sperm-whale. "Tell us how fast,"
cried he, "that we may get into port in time."

However, I drove a thread of oakum on top of the cotton, as from
the first I had intended to do. And Bruno again wagged his tail.
The cotton never "crawled." When the calking was finished, two
coats of copper paint were slapped on the bottom, two of white lead
on the topsides and bulwarks. The rudder was then shipped and
painted, and on the following day the Spray was launched. As she
rode at her ancient, rust-eaten anchor, she sat on the water like a
swan.

The Spray's dimensions were, when finished, thirty-six feet nine
inches long, over all, fourteen feet two inches wide, and four feet
two inches deep in the hold, her tonnage being nine tons net and
twelve and seventy-one hundredths tons gross.

Then the mast, a smart New Hampshire spruce, was fitted, and
likewise all the small appurtenances necessary for a short cruise.
Sails were bent, and away she flew with my friend Captain Pierce
and me, across Buzzard's Bay on a trial-trip - all right. The only
thing that now worried my friends along the beach was, "Will she
pay?" The cost of my new vessel was $553.62 for materials, and
thirteen months of my own labor. I was several months more than
that at Fairhaven, for I got work now and then on an occasional
whale-ship fitting farther down the harbor, and that kept me the
overtime.

CHAPTER II

Failure as a fisherman - A voyage around the world projected - From
Boston to Gloucester - Fitting out for the ocean voyage - Half of a
dory for a ship's boat - The run from Gloucester to Nova Scotia - A
shaking up in home waters - Among old friends.

I spent a season in my new craft fishing on the coast, only to find
that I had not the cunning properly to bait a hook. But at last the
time arrived to weigh anchor and get to sea in earnest. I had
resolved on a voyage around the world, and as the wind on the
morning of April 24,1895, was fair, at noon I weighed anchor, set
sail, and filled away from Boston, where the Spray had been moored
snugly all winter. The twelve-o'clock whistles were blowing just as
the sloop shot ahead under full sail. A short board was made up the
harbor on the port tack, then coming about she stood seaward, with
her boom well off to port, and swung past the ferries with lively
heels. A photographer on the outer pier at East Boston got a
picture of her as she swept by, her flag at the peak throwing its
folds clear. A thrilling pulse beat high in me. My step was light
on deck in the crisp air. I felt that there could be no turning
back, and that I was engaging in an adventure the meaning of which
I thoroughly understood. I had taken little advice from any one,
for I had a right to my own opinions in matters pertaining to the
sea. That the best of sailors might do worse than even I alone was
borne in upon me not a league from Boston docks, where a great
steamship, fully manned, officered, and piloted, lay stranded and
broken. This was the Venetian. She was broken completely in two
over a ledge. So in the first hour of my lone voyage I had proof
that the Spray could at least do better than this full-handed
steamship, for I was already farther on my voyage than she. "Take
warning, Spray, and have a care," I uttered aloud to my bark,
passing fairylike silently down the bay.

The wind freshened, and the Spray rounded Deer Island light at the
rate of seven knots.

Passing it, she squared away direct for Gloucester to procure there
some fishermen's stores. Waves dancing joyously across
Massachusetts Bay met her coming out of the harbor to dash them
into myriads of sparkling gems that hung about her at every surge.
The day was perfect, the sunlight clear and strong. Every particle
of water thrown into the air became a gem, and the Spray, bounding
ahead, snatched necklace after necklace from the sea, and as often
threw them away. We have all seen miniature rainbows about a ship's
prow, but the Spray flung out a bow of her own that day, such as I
had never seen before. Her good angel had embarked on the voyage; I
so read it in the sea.

Bold Nahant was soon abeam, then Marblehead was put astern. Other
vessels were outward bound, but none of them passed the Spray
flying along on her course. I heard the clanking of the dismal bell
on Norman's Woe as we went by; and the reef where the schooner
Hesperus struck I passed close aboard. The "bones" of a wreck
tossed up lay bleaching on the shore abreast. The wind still
freshening, I settled the throat of the mainsail to ease the
sloop's helm, for I could hardly hold her before it with the whole
mainsail set. A schooner ahead of me lowered all sail and ran into
port under bare poles, the wind being fair. As the Spray brushed by
the stranger, I saw that some of his sails were gone, and much
broken canvas hung in his rigging, from the effects of a squall.

I made for the cove, a lovely branch of Gloucester's fine harbor,
again to look the Spray over and again to weigh the voyage, and my
feelings, and all that. The bay was feather-white as my little
vessel tore in, smothered in foam. It was my first experience of
coming into port alone, with a craft of any size, and in among
shipping. Old fishermen ran down to the wharf for which the Spray
was heading, apparently intent upon braining herself there. I
hardly know how a calamity was averted, but with my heart in my
mouth, almost, I let go the wheel, stepped quickly forward, and
downed the jib. The sloop naturally rounded in the wind, and just
ranging ahead, laid her cheek against a mooring-pile at the
windward corner of the wharf, so quietly, after all, that she would
not have broken an egg. Very leisurely I passed a rope around the
post, and she was moored. I had a mind to stay in Gloucester
several days. Had I uttered a word it surely would have betrayed
me, for I was still quite nervous and short of breath.

I remained in Gloucester about two weeks, fitting out with the
various articles for the voyage most readily obtained there. The
owners of the wharf where I lay, and of many fishing-vessels, put
on board dry cod galore, also a barrel of oil to calm the waves.
They were old skippers themselves, and took a great interest in the
voyage. They also made the Spray a present of a "fisherman's own"
lantern, which I found would throw a light a great distance round.
Indeed, a ship that would run another down having such a good light
aboard would be capable of running into a light-ship. A gaff, a
pugh, and a dip-net, all of which an old fisherman declared I could
not sail without, were also put aboard. Then, top, from across the
cove came a case of copper paint, a famous antifouling article,
which stood me in good stead long after. I slapped two coats of
this paint on the bottom of the Spray while she lay a tide or so on
the hard beach.

For a boat to take along, I made shift to cut a castaway dory in
two athwartships, boarding up the end where it was cut. This half-
dory I could hoist in and out by the nose easily enough, by hooking
the throat-halyards into a strop fitted for the purpose. A whole
dory would be heavy and awkward to handle alone. Manifestly there
was not room on deck for more than the half of a boat, which, after
all, was better than no boat at all, and was large enough for one
man. I perceived, moreover, that the newly arranged craft would
answer for a washing-machine when placed athwartships, and also for
a bath-tub. Indeed, for the former office my razeed dory gained
such a reputation on the voyage that my washerwoman at Samoa would
not take no for an answer. She could see with one eye that it was a
new invention which beat any Yankee notion ever brought by
missionaries to the islands, and she had to have it.

The want of a chronometer for the voyage was all that now worried
me. In our newfangled notions of navigation it is supposed that a
mariner cannot find his way without one; and I had myself drifted
into this way of thinking. My old chronometer, a good one, had been
long in disuse. It would cost fifteen dollars to clean and rate it.
Fifteen dollars! For sufficient reasons I left that timepiece at
home, where the Dutchman left his anchor. I had the great lantern,
and a lady in Boston sent me the price of a large two-burner cabin
lamp, which lighted the cabin at night, and by some small
contriving served for a stove through the day.

Being thus refitted I was once more ready for sea, and on May 7
again made sail. With little room in which to turn, the Spray , in
gathering headway, scratched the paint off an old, fine-weather
craft in the fairway, being puttied and painted for a summer
voyage. "Who'll pay for that?" growled the painters. "I will," said
I. "With the main-sheet," echoed the captain of the Bluebird ,
close by, which was his way of saying that I was off. There was
nothing to pay for above five cents' worth of paint, maybe, but
such a din was raised between the old "hooker" and the Bluebird ,
which now took up my case, that the first cause of it was forgotten
altogether. Anyhow, no bill was sent after me.

The weather was mild on the day of my departure from Gloucester. On
the point ahead, as the Spray stood out of the cove, was a lively
picture, for the front of a tall factory was a flutter of
handkerchiefs and caps. Pretty faces peered out of the windows from
the top to the bottom of the building, all smiling bon voyage .
Some hailed me to know where away and why alone. Why? When I made
as if to stand in, a hundred pairs of arms reached out, and said
come, but the shore was dangerous! The sloop worked out of the bay
against a light southwest wind, and about noon squared away off
Eastern Point, receiving at the same time a hearty salute - the
last of many kindnesses to her at Gloucester. The wind freshened
off the point, and skipping along smoothly, the Spray was soon off
Thatcher's Island lights. Thence shaping her course east, by
compass, to go north of Cashes Ledge and the Amen Rocks, I sat and
considered the matter all over again, and asked myself once more
whether it were best to sail beyond the ledge and rocks at all. I
had only said that I would sail round the world in the Spray ,
"dangers of the sea excepted," but I must have said it very much in
earnest. The "charter-party" with myself seemed to bind me, and so
I sailed on. Toward night I hauled the sloop to the wind, and
baiting a hook, sounded for bottom-fish, in thirty fathoms of
water, on the edge of Cashes Ledge. With fair success I hauled till
dark, landing on deck three cod and two haddocks, one hake, and,
best of all, a small halibut, all plump and spry. This, I thought,
would be the place to take in a good stock of provisions above what
I already had; so I put out a sea-anchor that would hold her head
to windward. The current being southwest, against the wind, I felt
quite sure I would find the Spray still on the bank or near it in
the morning. Then "stradding" the cable and putting my great
lantern in the rigging, I lay down, for the first time at sea
alone, not to sleep, but to doze and to dream.

I had read somewhere of a fishing-schooner hooking her anchor into
a whale, and being towed a long way and at great speed. This was
exactly what happened to the Spray - in my dream! I could not
shake it off entirely when I awoke and found that it was the wind
blowing and the heavy sea now running that had disturbed my short
rest. A scud was flying across the moon. A storm was brewing;
indeed, it was already stormy. I reefed the sails, then hauled in
my sea-anchor, and setting what canvas the sloop could carry,
headed her away for Monhegan light, which she made before daylight
on the morning of the 8th. The wind being free, I ran on into Round
Pond harbor, which is a little port east from Pemaquid. Here I
rested a day, while the wind rattled among the pine-trees on shore.
But the following day was fine enough, and I put to sea, first
writing up my log from Cape Ann, not omitting a full account of my
adventure with the whale.

The Spray , heading east, stretched along the coast among many
islands and over a tranquil sea. At evening of this day, May 10,
she came up with a considerable island, which I shall always think
of as the Island of Frogs, for the Spray was charmed by a million
voices. From the Island of Frogs we made for the Island of Birds,
called Gannet Island, and sometimes Gannet Rock, whereon is a
bright, intermittent light, which flashed fitfully across the
Spray's deck as she coasted along under its light and shade. Thence
shaping a course for Briar's Island, I came among vessels the
following afternoon on the western fishing-grounds, and after
speaking a fisherman at anchor, who gave me a wrong course, the
Spray sailed directly over the southwest ledge through the worst
tide-race in the Bay of Fundy, and got into Westport harbor in Nova
Scotia, where I had spent eight years of my life as a lad.

The fisherman may have said "east-southeast," the course I was
steering when I hailed him; but I thought he said "east-northeast,"
and I accordingly changed it to that. Before he made up his mind to
answer me at all, he improved the occasion of his own curiosity to
know where I was from, and if I was alone, and if I didn't have "no
dorg nor no cat." It was the first time in all my life at sea that
I had heard a hail for information answered by a question. I think
the chap belonged to the Foreign Islands. There was one thing I was
sure of, and that was that he did not belong to Briar's Island,
because he dodged a sea that slopped over the rail, and stopping to
brush the water from his face, lost a fine cod which he was about
to ship. My islander would not have done that. It is known that a
Briar Islander, fish or no fish on his hook, never flinches from a
sea. He just tends to his lines and hauls or "saws." Nay, have I
not seen my old friend Deacon W. D - -, a good man of the island,
while listening to a sermon in the little church on the hill, reach
out his hand over the door of his pew and "jig" imaginary squid in
the aisle, to the intense delight of the young people, who did not
realize that to catch good fish one must have good bait, the thing
most on the deacon's mind.

I was delighted to reach Westport. Any port at all would have been
delightful after the terrible thrashing I got in the fierce
sou'west rip, and to find myself among old schoolmates now was
charming. It was the 13th of the month, and 13 is my lucky number -
a fact registered long before Dr. Nansen sailed in search of the
north pole with his crew of thirteen. Perhaps he had heard of my
success in taking a most extraordinary ship successfully to Brazil
with that number of crew. The very stones on Briar's Island I was
glad to see again, and I knew them all. The little shop round the
corner, which for thirty-five years I had not seen, was the same,
except that it looked a deal smaller. It wore the same shingles - I
was sure of it; for did not I know the roof where we boys, night
after night, hunted for the skin of a black cat, to be taken on a
dark night, to make a plaster for a poor lame man? Lowry the tailor
lived there when boys were boys. In his day he was fond of the gun.
He always carried his powder loose in the tail pocket of his coat.
He usually had in his mouth a short dudeen; but in an evil moment
he put the dudeen, lighted, in the pocket among the powder. Mr.
Lowry was an eccentric man.

At Briar's Island I overhauled the Spray once more and tried her
seams, but found that even the test of the sou'west rip had started
nothing. Bad weather and much head wind prevailing outside, I was
in no hurry to round Cape Sable. I made a short excursion with some
friends to St. Mary's Bay, an old cruising-ground, and back to the
island. Then I sailed, putting into Yarmouth the following day on
account of fog and head wind. I spent some days pleasantly enough
in Yarmouth, took in some butter for the voyage, also a barrel of
potatoes, filled six barrels of water, and stowed all under deck.
At Yarmouth, too, I got my famous tin clock, the only timepiece I
carried on the whole voyage. The price of it was a dollar and a
half, but on account of the face being smashed the merchant let me
have it for a dollar.

CHAPTER III

Good-by to the American coast - Off Sable Island in a fog - In the
open sea - The man in the moon takes an interest in the voyage -
The first fit of loneliness - The Spray encounters La Vaguisa - A
bottle of wine from the Spaniard - A bout of words with the captain
of the Java - The steamship Olympia spoken - Arrival at the Azores.

I now stowed all my goods securely, for the boisterous Atlantic was
before me, and I sent the topmast down, knowing that the Spray
would be the wholesomer with it on deck. Then I gave the lanyards a
pull and hitched them afresh, and saw that the gammon was secure,
also that the boat was lashed, for even in summer one may meet with
bad weather in the crossing.

In fact, many weeks of bad weather had prevailed. On July 1,
however, after a rude gale, the wind came out nor'west and clear,
propitious for a good run. On the following day, the head sea
having gone down, I sailed from Yarmouth, and let go my last hold
on America. The log of my first day on the Atlantic in the Spray
reads briefly: "9:30 A.M. sailed from Yarmouth. 4:30 P.M. passed
Cape Sable; distance, three cables from the land. The sloop making
eight knots. Fresh breeze N.W." Before the sun went down I was
taking my supper of strawberries and tea in smooth water under the
lee of the east-coast land, along which the Spray was now leisurely
skirting.

At noon on July 3 Ironbound Island was abeam. The Spray was again
at her best. A large schooner came out of Liverpool, Nova Scotia,
this morning, steering eastward. The Spray put her hull down astern
in five hours. At 6:45 P.M. I was in close under Chebucto Head
light, near Halifax harbor. I set my flag and squared away, taking
my departure from George's Island before dark to sail east of Sable
Island. There are many beacon lights along the coast. Sambro, the
Rock of Lamentations, carries a noble light, which, however, the
liner Atlantic , on the night of her terrible disaster, did not
see. I watched light after light sink astern as I sailed into the
unbounded sea, till Sambro, the last of them all, was below the
horizon. The Spray was then alone, and sailing on, she held her
course. July 4, at 6 A.M., I put in double reefs, and at 8:30 A.M.
turned out all reefs. At 9:40 P.M. I raised the sheen only of the
light on the west end of Sable Island, which may also be called the
Island of Tragedies. The fog, which till this moment had held off,
now lowered over the sea like a pall. I was in a world of fog, shut
off from the universe. I did not see any more of the light. By the
lead, which I cast often, I found that a little after midnight I
was passing the east point of the island, and should soon be clear
of dangers of land and shoals. The wind was holding free, though it
was from the foggy point, south-southwest. It is said that within a
few years Sable Island has been reduced from forty miles in length
to twenty, and that of three lighthouses built on it since 1880,
two have been washed away and the third will soon be engulfed.

On the evening of July 5 the Spray , after having steered all day
over a lumpy sea, took it into her head to go without the
helmsman's aid. I had been steering southeast by south, but the
wind hauling forward a bit, she dropped into a smooth lane, heading
southeast, and making about eight knots, her very best work. I
crowded on sail to cross the track of the liners without loss of
time, and to reach as soon as possible the friendly Gulf Stream.
The fog lifting before night, I was afforded a look at the sun just
as it was touching the sea. I watched it go down and out of sight.
Then I turned my face eastward, and there, apparently at the very
end of the bowsprit, was the smiling full moon rising out of the
sea. Neptune himself coming over the bows could not have startled
me more. "Good evening, sir," I cried; "I'm glad to see you." Many

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