There is nobody at the wheel, the wheel is not even
lashed and is set over a half-spoke weather helm. To be precise,
the wind is north-east; the Snark's mizzen is furled, her mainsail
is over to starboard, her head-sheets are hauled flat: and the
Snark's course is south-south-west. And yet there are men who have
sailed the seas for forty years and who hold that no boat can run
before it without being steered. They'll call me a liar when they
read this; it's what they called Captain Slocum when he said the
same of his Spray.
As regards the future of the Snark I'm all at sea. I don't know.
If I had the money or the credit, I'd build another Snark that WOULD
heave to. But I am at the end of my resources. I've got to put up
with the present Snark or quit - and I can't quit. So I guess I'll
have to try to get along with heaving the Snark to stern first. I
am waiting for the next gale to see how it will work. I think it
can be done. It all depends on how her stern takes the seas. And
who knows but that some wild morning on the China Sea, some gray-
beard skipper will stare, rub his incredulous eyes and stare again,
at the spectacle of a weird, small craft very much like the Snark,
hove to stern-first and riding out the gale?
P.S. On my return to California after the voyage, I learned that
the Snark was forty-three feet on the water-line instead of forty-
five. This was due to the fact that the builder was not on speaking
terms with the tape-line or two-foot rule.
CHAPTER III - ADVENTURE
No, adventure is not dead, and in spite of the steam engine and of
Thomas Cook & Son. When the announcement of the contemplated voyage
of the Snark was made, young men of "roving disposition" proved to
be legion, and young women as well - to say nothing of the elderly
men and women who volunteered for the voyage. Why, among my
personal friends there were at least half a dozen who regretted
their recent or imminent marriages; and there was one marriage I
know of that almost failed to come off because of the Snark.
Every mail to me was burdened with the letters of applicants who
were suffocating in the "man-stifled towns," and it soon dawned upon
me that a twentieth century Ulysses required a corps of
stenographers to clear his correspondence before setting sail. No,
adventure is certainly not dead - not while one receives letters that
begin:
"There is no doubt that when you read this soul-plea from a female
stranger in New York City," etc.; and wherein one learns, a little
farther on, that this female stranger weighs only ninety pounds,
wants to be cabin-boy, and "yearns to see the countries of the
world."
The possession of a "passionate fondness for geography," was the way
one applicant expressed the wander-lust that was in him; while
another wrote, "I am cursed with an eternal yearning to be always on
the move, consequently this letter to you." But best of all was the
fellow who said he wanted to come because his feet itched.
