leaving this pleasant
occupation merely to trim sails or tack, or to lie down and rest,
while the _Spray_ nibbled at the miles. I tried to compare my state
with that of old circumnavigators, who sailed exactly over the route
which I took from Cape Verde Islands or farther back to this point and
beyond, but there was no comparison so far as I had got. Their
hardships and romantic escapes--those of them who escaped death and
worse sufferings--did not enter into my experience, sailing all alone
around the world. For me is left to tell only of pleasant experiences,
till finally my adventures are prosy and tame.

I had just finished reading some of the most interesting of the old
voyages in woe-begone ships, and was already near Port Macquarie, on my
own cruise, when I made out, May 13, a modern dandy craft in distress,
anchored on the coast. Standing in for her, I found that she was the
cutter-yacht _Akbar_[B], which had sailed from Watson's Bay about three
days ahead of the _Spray_, and that she had run at once into trouble. No
wonder she did so. It was a case of babes in the wood or butterflies at
sea. Her owner, on his maiden voyage, was all duck trousers; the
captain, distinguished for the enormous yachtsman's cap he wore, was a
Murrumbidgee[C] whaler before he took command of the _Akbar_; and the
navigating officer, poor fellow, was almost as deaf as a post, and
nearly as stiff and immovable as a post in the ground. These three jolly
tars comprised the crew. None of them knew more about the sea or about a
vessel than a newly born babe knows about another world. They were bound
for New Guinea, so they said; perhaps it was as well that three
tenderfeet so tender as those never reached that destination.

[B] _Akbar_ was not her registered name, which need not be told

[C] The Murrumbidgee is a small river winding among the mountains of
Australia, and would be the last place in which to look for a whale.

The owner, whom I had met before he sailed, wanted to race the poor
old _Spray_ to Thursday Island en route. I declined the challenge,
naturally, on the ground of the unfairness of three young yachtsmen in
a clipper against an old sailor all alone in a craft of coarse build;
besides that, I would not on any account race in the Coral Sea.

[Illustration: "'Is it a-goin' to blow?'"]

"_Spray_ ahoy!" they all hailed now. "What's the weather goin' t' be?
Is it a-goin' to blow? And don't you think we'd better go back t'