The
Storage Batteries Worked Four Or Five Times In The Course Of Two
Years.
The fourteen-foot launch was rumoured to work at times, but
it invariably broke down whenever I stepped on board.
But the Snark sailed. It was the only way she could get anywhere.
She sailed for two years, and never touched rock, reef, nor shoal.
She had no inside ballast, her iron keel weighed five tons, but her
deep draught and high freeboard made her very stiff. Caught under
full sail in tropic squalls, she buried her rail and deck many
times, but stubbornly refused to turn turtle. She steered easily,
and she could run day and night, without steering, close-by, full-
and-by, and with the wind abeam. With the wind on her quarter and
the sails properly trimmed, she steered herself within two points,
and with the wind almost astern she required scarcely three points
for self-steering.
The Snark was partly built in San Francisco. The morning her iron
keel was to be cast was the morning of the great earthquake. Then
came anarchy. Six months overdue in the building, I sailed the
shell of her to Hawaii to be finished, the engine lashed to the
bottom, building materials lashed on deck. Had I remained in San
Francisco for completion, I'd still be there. As it was, partly
built, she cost four times what she ought to have cost.
The Snark was born unfortunately. She was libelled in San
Francisco, had her cheques protested as fraudulent in Hawaii, and
was fined for breach of quarantine in the Solomons. To save
themselves, the newspapers could not tell the truth about her. When
I discharged an incompetent captain, they said I had beaten him to a
pulp. When one young man returned home to continue at college, it
was reported that I was a regular Wolf Larsen, and that my whole
crew had deserted because I had beaten it to a pulp. In fact the
only blow struck on the Snark was when the cook was manhandled by a
captain who had shipped with me under false pretences, and whom I
discharged in Fiji. Also, Charmian and I boxed for exercise; but
neither of us was seriously maimed.
The voyage was our idea of a good time. I built the Snark and paid
for it, and for all expenses. I contracted to write thirty-five
thousand words descriptive of the trip for a magazine which was to
pay me the same rate I received for stories written at home.
Promptly the magazine advertised that it was sending me especially
around the world for itself. It was a wealthy magazine. And every
man who had business dealings with the Snark charged three prices
because forsooth the magazine could afford it. Down in the
uttermost South Sea isle this myth obtained, and I paid accordingly.
To this day everybody believes that the magazine paid for everything
and that I made a fortune out of the voyage.
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