ove came a case of copper paint, a
famous antifouling article, which stood me in good stead long after. I
slapped two coats of this paint on the bottom of the _Spray_ while she
lay a tide or so on the hard beach.

For a boat to take along, I made shift to cut a castaway dory in two
athwartships, boarding up the end where it was cut. This half-dory I
could hoist in and out by the nose easily enough, by hooking the
throat-halyards into a strop fitted for the purpose. A whole dory
would be heavy and awkward to handle alone. Manifestly there was not
room on deck for more than the half of a boat, which, after all, was
better than no boat at all, and was large enough for one man. I
perceived, moreover, that the newly arranged craft would answer for a
washing-machine when placed athwartships, and also for a bath-tub.
Indeed, for the former office my razeed dory gained such a reputation
on the voyage that my washerwoman at Samoa would not take no for an
answer. She could see with one eye that it was a new invention which
beat any Yankee notion ever brought by missionaries to the islands,
and she had to have it.

The want of a chronometer for the voyage was all that now worried me.
In our newfangled notions of navigation it is supposed that a mariner
cannot find his way without one; and I had myself drifted into this
way of thinking. My old chronometer, a good one, had been long in
disuse. It would cost fifteen dollars to clean and rate it. Fifteen
dollars! For sufficient reasons I left that timepiece at home, where
the Dutchman left his anchor. I had the great lantern, and a lady in
Boston sent me the price of a large two-burner cabin lamp, which
lighted the cabin at night, and by some small contriving served for a
stove through the day.

Being thus refitted I was once more ready for sea, and on May 7 again
made sail. With little room in which to turn, the _Spray_, in
gathering headway, scratched the paint off an old, fine-weather craft
in the fairway, being puttied and painted for a summer voyage. "Who'll
pay for that?" growled the painters. "I will," said I. "With the
main-sheet," echoed the captain of the _Bluebird_, close by, which was
his way of saying that I was off. There was nothing to pay for above
five cents' worth of paint, maybe, but such a din was raised between
the old "hooker" and the _Bluebird_, which now took up my case, that
the first cause of it was forgotten altogether. Anyhow, no bill was
sent after me.