The weather was mild on the day of my departure from Gloucester. On
the point ahead, as the _Spray_ stood out of the cove, was a lively
picture, for the front of a tall factory was a flutter of
handkerchiefs and caps. Pretty faces peered out of the windows from
the top to the bottom of the building, all smiling _bon voyage_. Some
hailed me to know where away and why alone. Why? When I made as if to
stand in, 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