Chapter I: Part 1

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*THE CRUISE OF THE
DREAM SHIP*

RALPH STOCK

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
PHOTOGRAPHS

LINE DRAWINGS
BY
LYNN BOGUE HUNT

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1922

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

TO
PETER AND STEVE

*CONTENTS*

CHAPTER

I. THE DREAM

On dreams, and the means to realize them.

II. THE PREPARATION

Concerning preparations in general, and personnel in particular.

III. AT VIGO, OFF THE COAST OF SPAIN

Some confessions and a few morals

IV. THE CANARY ISLANDS

Dropping the pilot--and the result

V. THE START ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

Visitations--pleasant, and the reverse

VI. THE ARRIVAL AT BRITISH WEST INDIES

Deep-sea thoughts--Concerning Calms--Visitors in mid-Atlantic--Barbados and beyond

VII. THROUGH THE PANAMA CANAL

From Atlantic to Pacific, and the strange happenings that intervened

VIII. THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS

The ash heap

IX. THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS

The Real South Seas--Big-game shooting extraordinary--A case of thwarted ambition

X. THE PAUMOTU ISLANDS

The people of the atolls--including Mr. Mumpus

XI. PAPEETE, TAHITI

Tahiti: its pleasures and problems

XII. THE ISLAND OF MOOREA

The land of the lizard men--Facts and fancies, including a few horrors

XIII. PALMERSTON ISLAND

A hint of hurricane--The atoll of perfection, introducing "Mister Masters himself"

XIV. SAVAGE ISLAND

The Island called "Savage," including the ordeal by hospitality

XV. THE FRIENDLY ISLANDS AND THE END OF THE DREAM

The island that _was_ savage--Dream's end, and a few realities

XVI. THURSDAY ISLAND

Concerning a wild-goose chase, and where it led

XVII. ADVICE TO DREAMERS OF DREAM SHIPS

For the prospective dream-ship owner the world over

APPENDIX

*LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS*

The Dream Ship . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

The Route of the Dream Ship

Ready for Sea

The Reciprocal Morning Douche, Mid-Ocean

Steve at the Sextant and Peter at the Helm

Peter's Cooking Week

Peter Entertains

The Dream Ship Passes from Atlantic to Pacific

At St. Lucia, West Indies

Launching Outrigger Canoe in the Marquesas

Pascal, the Pearl-Diving Non-starter

A Man of the Atolls

Off Nukuhiva, Marquesas Islands

Pearl-Diver About to Descend

Pearl-Divers in a Paumotan Lagoon

Mr. Mumpus's Blisters

Fish-Spearing on the Reef

Moorea, the Land of the Lizard Men

Moorea Greets the Dream Ship

The Leaning Palms

Landing on Palmerston Island

The National Sport at Palmerston Island

Dragging a Boat Through the Reef Pass

The Taro Patch

Mr. Masters Himself

The Dream Ship Bargain Sale

Thursday Island Pearling Luggers

In the Old Days of the "Floating Station" Schooner

High Holiday on a "T.I." Beach

Festival Headdress of Torres Straits Islanders

The Japanese Club

Out of the Deep

The Main Products of Torres Straits

An Islander's Home on T.I.

The Tennis Handicap

Lines of the Dream Ship, Designed by Colin Archer and Built at Porsgrund, Norway, in 1908

Sail and Rigging Plan of the Dream Ship

*THE CRUISE OF THE DREAM SHIP*

_On dreams, and the means to realize them_

*CHAPTER I*

_On dreams, and the means to realize them_

We all have our dreams. Without them we should be clods. It is in our dreams that we accomplish the impossible; the rich man dumps his load of responsibility and lives in a log shack on a mountain top, the poor man becomes rich, the stay-at-home travels, the wanderer finds an abiding place.

For more years than I like to recall my dream has been to cruise through the South Sea Islands in my own ship, and if you had ever been to the South Sea Islands, it would be yours also. They are the sole remaining spot on this earth that is not infested with big-game-shooting expeditions, globe-trotters, or profiteers, where the inhabitants know how to live, and where the unfortunate from distant and turbulent lands can still find interest, enjoyment, and peace.

My dream was as impracticable as most. There was a war to be attended to and lived through if Providence so willed. There was a ship to be bought, fitted out, and provisioned on a bank balance that would fill the modern cat's-meat-man with contempt. There were the little matters of cramming into a chronically unmathematical head sufficient knowledge of navigation to steer such a ship across the world when she _was_ bought, and of finding a crew that would work her without hope of monetary reward.

The thing looked and sounded sufficiently like comic opera to deter me from mentioning it to any but a select few, and _they_ laughed. Yet such is the driving power of a dream if its fulfilment is sufficiently desired that I write in retrospect with my vision a secure and accomplished fact.

Exactly how it all came about I find it difficult to recall. I have vague recollections of crouching in dug-outs in France, and while others had recourse during their leisure to letter-cases replete with photographs of fluffy girls, I pored with equal interest over plans and designs of my dream ship.

In hospital it was the same, and when a medical board politely ushered me into the street a free man, it took me rather less than four hours to reach the nearest seaport and commence a search that covered the best part of six months.

It is no easy matter to find the counterpart of a dream ship, but in the end I found her patiently awaiting me in a backwater of glorious Devon:--a Norwegian-built auxiliary cutter of twenty-three tons register, designed as a lifeboat for the North Sea fishing fleet, forty-seven feet over all, fifteen feet beam, eight feet draught, built to stand up to anything, and be handled by a crew of three or less. Such was my dream ship in cold print. In reality, and seen through her owner's eyes, she was, naturally, the most wonderful thing that ever happened. A mother on the subject of her child is almost derogatory compared with an owner concerning his ship, so the reader shall be spared further details.

Having found her, there was the little matter of paying for her. I had no money. I have never had any money, but that is a detail that should never be allowed to stand in the way of a really desirable dream. It was necessary to make some. How? By conducting a stubborn offensive on the Army Authorities for my war gratuity. By sitting up to all hours in a moth-eaten dressing-gown and a microscopic flat writing short stories. By assiduously cultivating maiden aunts. By coercion. By---- But I refuse to say more.

The dream ship became mine, but what of a crew? Well, I have a sister, and a sister is an uncommonly handy thing to have, provided she is of the right variety. Mine happens to be, for she agreed to forego all the delicacies of the season and float with me on a piece of wood to the South Sea Islands. So also did a recently demobilized officer who, on hearing that these same islands were not less than three thousand miles from the nearest early-morning parade, offered his services with almost unbecoming alacrity.

With ship and crew accounted for, those unacquainted with the intricacies of ocean cruising may imagine there was nothing more to be done than to sail. Others, who have perhaps trodden the thorny path leading to the fulfilment of a dream such as ours, will realize that our troubles had little more than begun. The hull of a ship--even a dream ship--is a thing vastly different from a vessel fully equipped for a voyage. The difference between a house "furnished" and "unfurnished" is nothing to it. We needed an auxiliary motor engine for entering and leaving port if we would escape extortionate towage charges. We needed copper sheathing to protect our future home against the dreaded cobra worm of tropical waters that has been known to reduce sound wood to the semblance of a honeycomb within six months. We needed water tanks to contain three hundred gallons, oil tanks to hold two hundred, nautical instruments and gear of every possible description, not to mention provisions for an indefinite period.

Exactly how we were to acquire these things without the proverbial penny to do it with was a problem that gave us pause until at an extraordinary, general meeting of the firm of Peter, Steve, and Myself, dream merchants, it was proposed, seconded, and carried unanimously that we suffered from lack of capital, and that, in the words of the chairman, we should have to scatter and scratch for it.

So, each to his method!

Peter became what is called in the advertisements "useful maid" to an exacting invalid of religious and parsimonious tendencies at a South Coast resort. Steve faded into the smoke of a great city on a mission the details of which he has never divulged to this day, though judging by its success I am divided in my surmise as to its nature between "bridge" and robbery with violence.

As for me, I saw nothing for it but a return to the moth-eaten dressing-gown--until I happened to visit the local fish market and asked the price of sole. The answer caused me furiously to think. There were a hundred and fifty sailing vessels in this old-fashioned Devonshire fishing fleet, each earning a handsome income, and not one of them a better craft than mine. Why not go trawling with the dream ship?

This I did, and propose to give a brief account of my experiences for the benefit of those desirous of knowing one way of making a ship pay for herself.

From frequent recourse to the bar-parlour of "The Hole in the Wall," a far-famed hostelry replete with smoke-grimed rafters and sawdust floor, I learnt that the universal custom amongst fishing craft thereabouts was to have a crew of three: two "hands" and a skipper. The money that the catch of fish realized on sale by auction was divided at the week end into five, a share each for the crew, and the remainder going "to the ship" or, in other words, to the owner, who is responsible for all gear.

As regards nets: there are two kinds of trawl net, the "beam" and the otter. Imagine a huge, meshed jelly-bag being towed along the bottom of the sea, and you have the net. But how is the mouth of it, which is often twenty feet long, kept open? In the case of the beam trawl, by a wooden spar terminating each end in iron "heads"; and this is the usual type of net for the sailing smacks comprising the main fleet. But for smaller craft, such as motor boats, a beam trawl is too heavy and unwieldy; consequently the otter trawl was invented.

This consists of two boards about three feet by four, weighted at the bottom, and attached to each corner of the mouth of the net. They are "slung" at such an angle that the force of the water as the boat tows them along the bottom of the sea forces them outward, like kites, and thus keeps the mouth of the net stretched. In addition to this, the top of the net's mouth is kept up by cork, and the bottom down, by leads disposed along the foot-rope. It is a simple contrivance, like most things ingenious.

Ninety fathoms of warp, and two wire "bridles," one leading to each board, and thirty fathoms in length, complete the fishing gear, which is paid out and hauled in by means of a hand capstan.

All these articles I somehow acquired, including a "hand" of forbidding aspect, and a boy. The dream ship was converted into a smack with as much expediency as an elderly shipwright with a taste for beer, and his accomplice, a lad of fifteen, allowed; and finally she stood, a thing of such beauty in smacks that I wrote a sonnet to her, which shows the appalling effects of freedom, sea air, and a fish diet.

My opinion of her, however, was not shared by the fishing fraternity. Almost everything that could be wrong with a smack was the matter with the dream ship according to these chronically pessimistic gentry. She had too much freeboard. She had too much beam for her length. Her bulwarks were not high enough. She would never "tow" (trawl).

Yet upon a never-to-be-forgotten morning we sailed--dearly beloved word of infinite possibilities!--we sailed at a seven-knot clip for precisely ten miles. We could beat the ketch-rigged smacks of the fleet to wind'ard without topsail or staysail. I grinned, the boy grinned, even the "hand" grinned as he looked aloft; and it was at that precise moment that I saw his grin fade into an open-mouthed, wide-eyed stare.

"She's gone at the eyes of the rigging," was all he said, with complete composure, and in rich Devonian.

We put about. The mast-head was leaning at an angle of forty degrees, and wabbling on its splintered base like a drunken man. The "hand," in white chin whiskers, enormous boots, and a bowler hat dented on one side, continued to grin. In that hour I hated the man. To him it was a gigantic joke, an amusing problem as to whether we could reach harbour before the mast fell about our ears. To me, the owner of a dream ship, it was tragedy. There are moments when even a sense of humour can be out of place.

One hundred yards from our moorings the mast "went" at the deck as well as the hounds, and fell with a crash the full length of the ship--without touching a soul. It was little short of a miracle, and for a few moments we stood in our several places pondering it.

The mast had scarce met the deck, with the sails and rigging hanging over the side in a tangled mass, when a smack's crew was alongside. Did we want help? We did, but hardly expected such a stiff bill for salvage as was rendered the next day.

It took three weeks to step the dream ship's new mast; three miserable weeks of waiting that only those who have "fitted out" can appreciate. But in time we sailed afresh. We even launched the trawl with much shouting and flurry, and at the end of two hours' speculation hauled it up again by sheer brawn and the capstan, got the net aboard, and found mud, nothing but mud, in the cod-end.

Various explanations were forthcoming from the "hand" for this calamity. There was too much lead on the foot-rope. There was too much cork on the head-line. The otter boards were not slung true. We had been towing too fast. We had been towing too slow. Why, bless your heart, there were men (successful fishermen now) who had spent months in adjusting an otter trawl. An inch this way or that made all the difference. An otter trawl was like a watch. Out of all this the hard fact emerged that we had caught no fish.

For two weeks we were out early and late experimenting, and for two weeks I scraped together (Heaven knows how!) sufficient for the "hand's" retainer and my own board and lodging. And then--success came to us as by a miracle. Instead of mud, or shells, or weed, we found fish in the cod-end: fat plaice, luxurious sole, skate, and whiting.

What we had done to our otter trawl I don't think anyone knew, least of all the "hand," and I am none the wiser to this day, but it caught fish. We treasured that trawl as something exceedingly precious, and nothing, nothing whatsoever, would cause us to alter its ropes or leads a hair's breadth. We lived in constant dread that we should meet a "hitch" (an obstacle on the bottom of the sea) that would make it necessary to cut the warp and lose this wonderful trawl. It would have taken two weeks, perhaps two months, to discover another like it, and we were averaging fifty pounds a week.

Success breeds ambition, and I installed a motor auxiliary engine. Further, there is only one way of catching more fish than by trawling all day, and that is trawling all night. The fish, especially whiting, do not see the net coming in the dark. So we acquired the habits of night-hawks, sailing at four o'clock in the afternoon, and returning at six the next morning. It paid. It paid handsomely. What should I not be able to report at the next general meeting of dream merchants?

It was a fine sight on a pitch-black night to see our wake streaming away like smoke from the propeller, so bright with phosphorescence that it seemed a powerful light must be hung over the stern. And to watch the net, lit with a myriad tiny lamps, creeping in yard by yard. Then, what a splashing as the big skate and plaice came alongside!

It must be remembered that the dream ship's career as a fishing smack was during the last phases of the great war. She saw three German submarines, two steamers sunk, and had her stalwart ribs severely shaken by depth-charges on several occasions. In fact, as one concussion caused her to leak, I had serious thoughts of decorating her with a wound-stripe on the starboard quarter. What the effect of one of those fearful implements of destruction must be at close quarters, and while submerged, I can hardly imagine. I only know that one was dropped about half a mile from the dream ship, and from the cabin it sounded as though someone had hit the oil-tanks with a sledge-hammer, and felt as though she had run bow on, and at a nine-knot clip, into an iceberg.

Over twenty good, sound fishing smacks belonging to the fleet with which we sailed were sent to the bottom by German submarines. In one case the crew were stripped of their jerseys--the only article aboard the smack that seemed to appeal to the Hun--and left on deck while the submarine submerged under their feet. The one survivor's chief complaint appeared to be the loss of his jersey.

On more than one occasion a German submarine appeared in the midst of the fishing fleet, which they favoured as an unsuspected lurking-place. Warps were cut on the instant, and, under full sail, a hundred smacks might have been seen racing harbourward minus their gear. This became such a common occurrence that patrol boats were sent out with the fleet, and "forbidden areas" created.

These last were unpopular with fishermen. The authorities seemed to pitch inevitably on the most prolific grounds to place under the ban. Poaching became general. In one instance the skipper of a smack, who had had a bad "week's work," decided to make amends or perish in the effort. He altered the registered number of his boat, which is carried in large white figures on the mainsail and bow, with whitewash, burnt-corked the faces of himself and his crew, and sailed for the banned area.

For hours he trawled backward and forward across the holy ground, with dread and hope alternating in his heart, and with the first hint of dawn hauled in his net, to discover that in the general excitement he had "shot" his trawl with the cod-end untied!

Nothing daunted, he returned to the attack the following night, and as Fate the Jester so often decrees, on this occasion, when the cod-end was securely tied and all going well, the hated voice of the fisheries inspector, better known as the "bogey-man," came out of the night, close alongside: "You are reported for trawling in the proscribed area."

Simultaneously a shaft of light from an electric torch bit into the darkness, exposing the smack's number and her black-faced crew.

"Stand by. I'm coming aboard," were the next instructions, but the men were suddenly electrified into life. In stony silence, so that their voices should not be recognized, the skipper successfully threatened the boarding "bogey-man" with a cutlass, while the crew set the steam capstan to work and soon had the trawl aboard with its valuable freight.

With the "bogey-man" still threatening dire vengeance, the smack stood out to sea, and catching the morning breeze, outstripped the inspector's launch. The authorities never knew who perpetrated this outrage, as, when they came to look up the smack's number in the register, they found it to be that of an antiquated hulk that had never left harbour.

It is to be feared that the dream ship poached. On one occasion a thick fog descended upon her while trawling. She continued the motion blindly for three hours, when the fog lifted and we discovered--naturally with deep regrets--that we had covered a forbidden area from end to end, and had caught sole, plaice, and turbot to the value of forty pounds.

The dream ship had many experiences while "paying for herself," and was destined to have many more. For her size, it is doubtful if any craft has enjoyed a more varied life, and the more I think of her lying there in foreign waters, ... But of this anon.

*THE PREPARATION*

_Concerning preparations in general, and personnel in
particular_

*CHAPTER II*

_Concerning preparations in general, and personnel in
particular_

Our separate excursions into the field of commerce resulted in a healthier financial outlook at the next general meeting of dream merchants. Plans developed apace. Lists were made, schedules drawn up. An actual sailing date began to emerge out of a welter of conjecture.

On paper, the dream ship was converted from a work-worn fishing-smack into a cruiser yacht of comfort and elegance within a month, and a trifle under the estimated cost.

On paper, the art of navigation was acquired in our spare time, after the airy fashion of a Correspondence-School advertisement.

And again on paper--a map of the world outspread on the cabin table, to be exact--we actually decided on our route. At the point of an indomitable lead pencil we traversed vast tracts of ocean in the winking of an eye, and explored the furthermost corners of the earth; and if there is a more fascinating evening's entertainment, I should like to hear of it.

Spain should be touched at, for the sake of her wine, if nothing else; perhaps Madeira, and most certainly the Canary Islands. After that, there was the little matter of the Atlantic Ocean, ending in the West Indies. Then came the Caribbean Sea, the Panama Canal, and so down into the milky way of the Pacific. It looked a long way; it _was_ a long way, but we had a ship, and we had a crew, and what was the sea if not the highway of the earth? The enthusiasm of ignorance? Perhaps; yet I am convinced that without the enthusiasm, and most certainly without the ignorance, we should never have set sail, much less won through to our goal.

The transition from fancy to fact was effected the following morning, when Steve and I commenced the soul-racking task of transferring twelve tons of rusty pig-iron from the dream ship's bilge to the quay alongside which we lay. This mass of obstinate metal had to be chipped and painted, and ultimately replaced so that we might disport ourselves on our beam ends, if the elements so willed, without shifting it. It was one of the dream ship's strong points, that her ballast was all "inside." There was no "fin" of lead hanging from her keel, that might come adrift from a multitude of causes, and leave us a tottering hulk. I told Steve this, as we wrestled with two hundredweight pigs, that had a knack of slipping their moorings in mid-air, and crashing through the cabin floor boards, or on to our anatomies with striking impartiality. I told it to him again, as we sat in the rain on the quay, chipping rust into each other's eyes, but received no satisfactory reply on either occasion.

"By the way," was all he said that evening, when, weary and bruised and rusty, we flung ourselves on our bunks, "according to schedule, this is where we study navigation, isn't it?" And for three mortal hours he gave his undivided attention to a nautical epitome. That is the kind of man Steve is.

There is no undertaking that requires a more careful selection of personnel than a cruise such as we contemplated, and no better opportunity of taking a man's measure than when fitting out! By the time it is done, one has either come to the conclusion that the other fellow has his points, or that to remain in his company another hour is beyond endurance. Naturally, his feelings are similar, and that we of the dream ship stood the mutual test seemed to me to augur well for the future.

It was during this trying period that we encountered a peculiarly pernicious type of the genus yachtsman on his native heath. He was owner of a pretty little six-tonner across the creek, and was "fitting out" also--had been for two months, as far as we could gather. The thing was evidently a hobby with him that he infinitely preferred to getting to sea. With a paint pot in one hand, and a camel's hair brush in the other, he advanced on his craft in the manner of an artist attacking a master canvas, applied the pigment, and stood back with his head at an angle to view the effect. In itself there was nothing against this form of amusement, provided that it interfered with no one else; but, evidently tiring of his own company, at which I am not surprised, our yachtsman strolled in the direction of the dream ship to offer unsolicited criticism.

"Fine craft you have there," was his introductory remark, and my heart warmed to him. Here, at all events, was a judge. "But too much beam for her length, and too much _flaire_. She'll break your heart going to wind'ard," he added, judicially, and I confess to loathing him on the instant. Imagine a stranger approaching you in the street and saying: "Fine wife you have there, but I don't like her face--or her action." Well, that is how I felt. For you must be told, unless you are an "owner" and know already, that the simile of the ship and the wife is not so far-fetched as may appear. Yet, with superhuman restraint, I continued to chip iron while it was pointed out to me that lead was better, that to paint spars instead of varnishing them was a crime, and to paint decks was worse; in short, that most things about the dream ship met with this yachtsman's hearty disapproval. To which I was constrained to make answer that with all her defects the dream ship happened to satisfy _me_ because I was an ex-fisherman and not a yachtsman; that for one thing I could not afford to be a yachtsman, and for another I had no wish to be a yachtsman, being rather too fond of the sea. So we parted the best of enemies, and had not done with each other, as will transpire later.

The moral of this somewhat hectic interlude is: when fitting out for a cruise, get the advice of a deep-water man, and find a place where there are no yachtsmen. This last is difficult, but it is worth while.

Much the same thing applies to the study of navigation. If the beginner lends an ear to the horde of amateur cranks who dabble in the subject, and who seem obsessed with a desire to impart their half-baked theories to others, he will know as much about the practical business of finding a ship's position at sea as he does about the origin of life. There is the long lean man, usually with a drooping moustache, who demonstrates on an instrument of his own invention that can do anything but talk--this last deficiency being amply atoned for by the inventor himself. There is the man with "short cuts" and "clean cuts." There is even the man who still persists in the belief that the world is "flat with rounded edges," and produces reams of his own screed, printed at enormous expense, in support of his theories; but he is easily disposed of. After admitting that the shape of the world is not a burning question with you anyway, because after all it is not a bad old world and certainly the best we can expect in this life, you confess to a sneaking suspicion that it is a rhomboid.

No, there is only one way of learning to find a ship's position at sea if you are unable to spend three months or more at a school of navigation, and that is to find a retired master mariner who, for a stipulated sum, will teach you exactly what he did himself probably three hundred and sixty-five times in the year for thirty years. Hearken unto him, in spite of all lures to the contrary, and in three weeks or less the miracle will cease to be a miracle.

We of the dream ship were fortunate in running such a mentor to earth in his charming cottage on the hillside, overlooking the harbour. The Skipper, as he shall henceforth be called, was of the old school, and so, if it is permissible to say such things of a lady, was his wife! This remarkable woman followed the sea with her husband on every ocean-going schooner he commanded, and once, when the entire crew was down with beri-beri, and a voracious tug hovered alongside like a bird of prey, she brought the ship to port single-handed, thus saving the owners a stupendous sum for salvage. They rewarded her with a presentation piano, and she wept. She could not play. So a cheque for a hundred guineas was substituted, and her husband alleges that she bought three new hats and a galley range in which she cooks the acme in figgy dough to this day.

The Skipper, a man of monumental and very necessary patience, received us each day in a torture chamber of his own, replete with thumb screw and rack in the form of nautical epitomes, and model craft at variance on the placid surface of a deal table. That small room was the scene of strange and tragic happenings. Gales, fogs, collisions, lee shores, and shipwreck followed one another in rapid succession, and invariably terminated in the short, sharp query: "What do you do now?"

But these things constituted seamanship, which is essentially a matter of experience, not of rote. It was after our first, second, and even third day of attempting to find longitude that we reeled from the classroom, our heads a whirling chaos of logarithms, traverse tables, and despair. At no time that I can recall did our dream come so near to dissolution.

"Have you," muttered Steve, as we paused during our descent to the town, and the strongest cup of tea procurable, "have you the foggiest idea of what we are driving at?"

I admitted that I had not, and the funereal procession proceeded on its way.

There are two methods of attacking the problem of navigation: one is by intelligent understanding, and the other by rule of thumb. If yours is the type of mind that revels in mathematics, then the first is obviously your course, and a pleasant one at that. If, upon the other hand, you are cursed, as I am, with a mind that reels at the mere sight of a timetable, then the second has its points, for you get there just the same, and in spite of experts' warnings to the contrary. Without knowing the why or wherefore of your figurative acrobatics, provided you follow the rule of thumb implicitly, and can add, subtract, multiply, and divide correctly, there is nothing to prevent you from finding a ship's position at sea day in and day out, identically with the greatest experts on earth. I have done it, and I have a shrewd suspicion, backed by the opinion of the Skipper, that more than one master mariner does it in precisely the same way. All hail to logarithms, and the obscure but miraculous gentleman who invented them!

At long last there came a day when the shipwright's hammer ceased to resound aboard the dream ship, and save for provisions and water, and a snowdrift of unpaid bills, we were ready to take leave of the yards.

With an ebb tide and the faithful Skipper aboard, we dropped down the river, and as cleanly as may be on to a mud bank! I am not going to say how it happened, because I do not know. All we were acutely conscious of at the time was that our yachtsman, in his pretty little six-tonner, had chosen the same date of departure as ourselves, and was rapidly approaching down the channel that we should have followed, and had not, and that somehow the secret of our dream must have reached his protruding ears, for as he came abreast of us he reared his hideous form out of the cockpit.

"Hullo," he cried. "Have you made your South Sea Islands already?"

We did not answer, there was nothing to be said; but when a tug hauled us free on the next tide, and rounding a bend in the river, we came upon our adversary in precisely the same predicament, we passed him in silence, the most satisfying silence I have ever indulged in.

Without a dissentient voice, the task of choosing and stowing the provisions was relegated to Peter---- "A woman is so much better at that sort of thing." Steve and I admitted as much, with touching magnanimity.

In due course a cart backed up to the quayside, and an active little grocer proceeded to heap the dream ship's deck with comestibles--tinned, boxed, and jarred. These we passed through the skylights, before an admiring audience of fisher-folk, and Peter, being ambidextrous, contrived to stow them in the lockers with one hand and make a list of them with the other.

I have my own notions about provisioning a dream ship in the future--if for me there is a future in dream ships. During the following year we proved, to our own dissatisfaction, that although tinned food is mighty handy, it is not a healthy continuous diet... No, I see myself laying in salt junk of the windjammer variety, plenty of waterglassed eggs and condensed milk, good ship's biscuits, a "crock" of hand-salted butter, dried fruits, jam or marmalade to taste, pickled beetroot for the blood, flour, raisins, and baking powder, Scotch oatmeal, sugar, tea, coffee, cocoa, and lard, and nothing else whatsoever. It may be asked: "What else could there possibly be?"--to which I make answer: "A hundred and one canned atrocities, such as Somebody's curried giblets, or Somebody Else's evaporated tripe, that it were better if one consigned to the deep than ate." It is extraordinary the number of useless things one can be lured into acquiring while "fitting out," and we of the dream ship bought most of them.

"Barter" was Peter's idea. In her mind the word was inalienably associated with the South Sea Islands, and were we not bound thither? It was only another example of her boundless optimism. Steve and I might furtively discuss the number of miles between ourselves and our goal, the probable discomfitures by the way, even the possibility of not getting there at all. Not so Peter. We were going to the South Sea Islands, and to go to the South Sea Islands without "barter" was a thing undreamed of in her philosophy. Hence a hurried pilgrimage to London, and the purchase, out of our rapidly diminishing capital, of variegated prints, looking-glasses, imitation tortoise-shell hair combs, Jew's harps, and brown paper belts.

On our return, the Skipper, who had remained aboard as watchman during our absence, displayed a certain uneasiness, the cause of which was hard to determine. He expressed his keen admiration for the dream ship, as he had often done before, and then paused, until goaded into the confession that he wished he thought as much of her crew. That is not how he put it, but that was what he meant, and we were inclined to agree with him. In other words, it was on the dear old man's conscience that he was letting us go to sea with insufficient knowledge, a scruple as rare as it is refreshing these days. We immediately and unanimously pointed out that there was only one way out of the dilemma, and that was for him to accompany us. He shook his grizzled head, and smiled wistfully; said it was twenty years since he had been to sea, that he was too old, that his "missus" would never let him go, and finally, with a twinkle in his keen blue eye, that he would come as far as Spain "just to get us into the hang of longitude," whereat we fell upon him in a paean of gratitude.

Behold, then, the crew of the dream ship ready to sail, with a combined capital of one hundred pounds sterling, and a clearance for Brisbane, Australia.

*AT VIGO, OFF THE COAST OF SPAIN*

_Some confessions and a few morals_

*CHAPTER III*

_Some confessions and a few morals_

At six o'clock the next morning a small, depressed-looking procession wended its way to the quay, followed by the sidelong glances and whispered comments of the fish-market fraternity.

It was the noble army of dream merchants setting forth on its quest. And why depressed? I do not know, except that, personally, on the eve of any problematical undertaking I feel that way, and so, apparently, do others. Perhaps it was that the enthusiasm of ignorance had momentarily deserted us, and we were awed by a rational glimpse of the task that lay ahead. Such moods vanish the instant one gets down to work, the great panacea, but until then they crouch on the shoulders, a dour company.

In silence we rowed out to the dream ship, and hoisted sail. I was going to say that in silence we lowered the dinghy on to its chocks, but, as a fact, the keel descended on the Skipper's toe, extracting a shout of anguish from that usually restrained mariner.

Almost simultaneously, and for no apparent reason, Steve took an involuntary seat on the open skylight, which shut with a crash on one of his fingers.

The moorings were cast off prematurely, and, getting under way on the wrong tack, we sailed, with the utmost precision, into a neighbouring fishing-smack, nearly breaking our bowsprit.

I could imagine the grinning heads of the fisher folk lining the breakwater wall.

"They be goin' ter the South Sea Islands, they be!" I could almost hear them saying, and dived below to show them what a motor auxiliary could do. There were one hundred and fifty vessels moored in that harbour, and I should not like to say how many we fouled during the next half hour. Indeed I could not, for throughout the process I was wrestling with the engine, which refused to budge--until we had rounded the breakwater, and there was no further use for it. Such is the way of these necessary evils aboard a sailing ship.

Coming on deck, I was confronted with a sorry spectacle. Our port light-board was in splinters. Relics of vessels we had caressed in parting littered the deck. The Skipper was in the steering well, with the tiller in one hand and his toe in the other; and Peter was administering iodine and lint to Steve's crushed finger.

"She goes!" I triumphed, tactlessly referring to my Herculean labours with the engine.

"D'you think it's broken?" demanded the Skipper, extending an enormous, bootless foot.

"Flat as a pancake," muttered Steve.

Which gives a fair idea of the trend of individual thought on occasions.

But at long last we were off! Off before a seven-knot nor'-wester, and with only twelve thousand miles to go! What else mattered?

By the time we had picked up an intermittent pallor on the horizon that was Ushant light at a distance of thirty miles, the wind had strengthened to half a gale, and there was nothing the dream ship loved more dearly than half a gale on the quarter. In a series of exhilarating swoops, it flung her down into the Bay of Biscay; but what she did not like was being left there to roll helplessly in a windless swell. I have to call it a "swell," just as I have to say we "rolled," though neither word conveys our subsequent acrobatics in the least.

"The Bay" has an unsavoury reputation anyway, but for sheer unpleasantness commend me to the mood in which the dream ship made its acquaintance.

Literally from beam end to beam end we lurched. The engine was useless. Our propeller was out of the quarter, and under present circumstances as much out of the water as in it.

Any one aboard capable of sea-sickness, promptly _was_. The Skipper who, it must be confessed, had not been able to eat since setting sail, though he clung to his duties like a Stoic, was as near plaintive as I have ever seen him. Curiously enough, his malady took the form of conjuring visions of his good wife's cooking. I honestly believe that if we had been able to produce the roast beef, cabbage, and "figgy dough" of his own home table, he would have eaten. But all we could offer him was bovril, tongue, and tinned asparagus. We did not know how to live, he assured us. On the schooner in the old days he had a _stove_, not one of these newfangled tin contraptions. And his wife cooked. And when she cooked, she _cooked_! Figgy dough that melted in the mouth.

At this juncture his audience was well advised to move to a safe distance.

In response to our eternal lurchings, ominous sounds began to filter up from below. A metallic click-clock, click-clock, a methodical thudding, a resounding crash. The first of these proved to be a kerosene tank that had come adrift from its rack fastenings, and threatened to fall on the engine. A galvanized iron receptacle containing seventy gallons of liquid is not the easiest of things to handle in a seaway, let alone with a crushed finger. My heart went out to Steve, but it was characteristic of the man that never a whimper escaped him. All that we could do was to wedge the tank into place with stout battens clean across the ship, which we did, and turned our attention to the next calamity. The piano had followed the example of the tank, and the wash-hand stand had emulated the piano; and rather than appear peculiar, a two-hundred-pound drum of treasured Scotch oatmeal was rolling on the floor, mingling its contents with the brine that oozed from a crate of salt pork wedged under the cabin table.

The crash was merely the dethronement of a lighted stove in the fo'c's'le, on which Peter had been persisting for the last hour, and in spite of her own condition, in an attempt to produce something that the Skipper _would_ eat.

On the whole, a healthy lesson in making all secure before sailing.

In the midst of our agonies below, a stentorian voice hailed us from the cockpit:

"All hands on deck! Lower mainsail!" Which was followed almost immediately by a "crack" like a pistol shot.

Our boom had snapped clean off about five feet from the end.

Such is "the Bay" in lightsome mood. Apparently the only article aboard unaffected by it was the chronometer, ticking placidly in its gimbals and bed of plush. There was something enviable about that chronometer.

The dawn brought with it a faint but steady breath, and discovering that there was sufficient boom left to set a double-reefed mainsail, we continued on our way, and a blessedly even keel, until toward evening we raised the coast of Spain.

The welcome and unmistakable smell of land came to us over the water, and presently the mouth of the Vigo River opened out, revealing a maze of leading lights.

The engine behaved itself, and by midnight the dream ship had anchored off the town, to an accompaniment of star shells and crackers.

It pleased us to imagine that these were our welcome, but as a fact the inevitable Spanish fiesta was in progress. We had made our first foreign port.

*THE CANARY ISLANDS*

_Dropping the pilot--and the result_

*CHAPTER IV*

_Dropping the pilot--and the result_

Our first and imperative need was sleep. There comes a time when enforced wakefulness causes the eyes to feel as though they were sinking into the head. We of the dream ship had reached this pitch, and turned in "all standing," to remain log-like until disturbed by port officials at five o'clock the next morning.

In a state of pyjamas and semi-torpor I handed them the ship's papers, which proved to be satisfactory; Steve treated them to a few chosen words in near-Spanish picked up during a doubtful past in Mexico, and we tumbled in again. But not to sleep. Thereafter, an endless procession of boats, manned by picturesque and voluble brigands who offered for sale every conceivable commodity from anchor chain to picture postcards, succeeded in dragging us from our bunks, and propelling us on deck.

A pleasant little town is Vigo. One of a goodly number scattered over the world that I should like to make my home. Each to his taste, and perhaps I am impressionable as to the desirable spots of this earth, but to my way of thinking almost any race knows how to enjoy life better than the Anglo-Saxon of to-day, and fashions its surroundings to that end.

From the river front, with its handsome promenade, hotels, and green, open spaces, Vigo climbs the sunny hillside in cheerful fashion. No one seems overburdened with business cares, but when such things have to be attended to, the palm-fringed _Alamada_ takes the place of an office, and the "deal" is discussed over _vino tinto_ and cigarettes, to the accompaniment of an excellent band.

We of the dream ship went ashore with the Skipper wearing a fancy-worked carpet-slipper on one foot and a boot on the other, but no one appeared to notice the peculiarity, and it is quite certain the Skipper would not have minded if they had. His is a type of hardihood that I envy as much as I admire.

At lunch, too, he found cause for complaint in the food, and small wonder. After a week's enforced abstention, he found that in these benighted parts figgy dough was as unprocurable as elsewhere. Frankly, he was disappointed in Vigo and, after limping over the cobblestones in clothes more adapted to the Arctic than to Spanish sunshine, he returned aboard "to do a few jobs." We knew what this meant. He would systematically and efficiently set right everything that was wrong aboard the dream ship--a long-splice here, a bit of carpentry there--which was precisely what we ought to have been doing instead of gallivanting about Vigo. Most excellent of skippers! He had been a tower of strength to us in time of stress, and a qualm seized me when I secured his passage to Southampton, and realized that in another week he would be gone.

From the quaint cobbled and terraced streets of the old town we went down to the _Alamada_, and sat for a while watching the children dance to the music of the band. No organized, mechanical spectacle this, but a joyous affair of rhythmic abandon, twinkling legs, and laughter. Most of us like to think that the children of our own particular country are the most desirable, and they would be poor folk who did not; but for unconscious grace of movement and dainty appearance, the Spanish kiddy is hard to beat.

And this happy absence of self-consciousness is not confined to the children. Picture, if you can, and as we of the dream ship saw him a little later, a well-dressed Spanish gentleman standing in the middle of one of Vigo's main thoroughfares and gazing toward the housetops, apparently engaged in practising the deaf-and-dumb alphabet. No one of the stream of pedestrians passing along the sidewalks took the slightest notice of him. Neither did the wheeled traffic, except to swerve obligingly out of his path. It was _his_ affair, and a love affair at that. He was conversing with his _enamorata_ at the third-floor balcony window in the only way possible to a suitor in Spain, where parents firmly believe in "love at a distance" until the actual engagement. And it needed three vulgar sightseers such as the crew of the dream ship to find anything unusual in the proceeding. I am ashamed to say that the lady caught sight of us, and pointed in alarm, whereat the gentleman turned with an excusable frown of annoyance, and we hurried on our way.

There are only two things the Spaniard takes really seriously: his love and his bull-fights. Leave him to them, as you value a whole skin.

Our next introduction was to the local cable office. Personally, I have always regarded such places as drab receptacles for grudging messages, but with the Eastern Telegraph Company it is a different matter. Certainly this admirable concern takes your message, but then proceeds to take you to its heart, and thereafter, wherever its myriad wires extend, you may be sure of a welcome from the kindliest of hosts. It conducts you to its palatial bachelor quarters situated on the hillside behind the town, and proceeds to spoil you with every device known to a pampered age. Tennis, golf, dances, and dinners are yours to repletion, followed by moonlight car rides into the country, and feasts at distant _fondas_ under the trellised vines.

At any rate, that is what it did with us, and we tried to reciprocate. The Eastern Telegraph Company, or as much of it as could get aboard at one time, made the dream ship its headquarters during our stay; dived from her bowsprit or under her keel with equal delight, mealed off strange messes in her seething saloon, and sang songs on deck to Peter's piano accompaniment below.

With such distractions afoot, it is small wonder that nearly a week slipped by before the subject of a sailing date received the attention it deserved. The Skipper grunted his disapproval of our dilatory methods, and pointed out in a satirical fashion peculiarly his own that there were "things" to be done. Amongst them, he mentioned the necessity of making out a new deviation card by the Polar Star, whereat Steve and I collapsed. Had we not done with this pest of deviation? Had we not already discovered and tabulated, at the cost of terrific mental effort, the error of the dream ship's compass owing to local attraction?

The Skipper admitted as much with a wistful smile, but pointed out that deviation has an aggravating habit of changing with latitude. It was the first we had heard of it, and that night we sat again under our long-suffering professor, and swung the dream ship to a mocking North Star.

Then there was the matter of our broken boom. The Skipper and I towed it over, neatly scarfed (dovetailed and bound) from a neighbouring shipyard the next morning. And the instability of things below as demonstrated in the Bay of Biscay? This was remedied by having iron bands placed round everything movable, and screwed to bulkhead or floor. We were ready. The Skipper stepped ashore with his modest little suitcase, and limped away without so much as a backward glance. Why? His "missus" has told me since that he never expected to see us again.

So we three and the dream ship dropped down Vigo River bound for Las Palmas, Canary Islands, with the biggest mixed cargo of hope and ignorance that ever put to sea.

Four hours on and eight off was how we apportioned our watches and, thanks to fair winds and the easy handling of the dream ship, it was seldom necessary for more than one of us to be on deck at a time. In fact, there were hours on end when the helmsman could peg the tiller and take a constitutional.

Cooking we took week and week about, a dreaded ordeal. It is one thing to concoct food in a porcelain-fitted kitchen on _terra firma_, and quite another to do it over a primus stove in a leaping, gyrating fo'c's'le. Porridge was found adhering to the ceiling after Steve's "week," but hush! perhaps he may have something to say on the subject of Peter and myself. There is always plenty to say about the other fellow, but in nine cases out of ten it is best left unsaid. Forbearance is as much the keynote of good-fellowship on a dream ship as elsewhere--perhaps more--and we are rather proud of the fact that we have covered half the world without battle, murder, or sudden death.

With only three of a crew some of our troubles may be imagined, but undoubtedly the worst of these, after a couple of weeks at sea, was being awakened from a trance-like sleep to take a trick at the tiller. One does not feel human under such circumstances, but more in the nature of a bear disturbed during hibernation.

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The Cruise of the Dream ShipChapter I: Part 1

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