Sailing Alone Around The World | Page 8

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.
[Illustration: "'No dorg nor no cat.'"]
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