ocean blue, Our saucy ship's a beauty.
We're sailors good and true, And attentive to our duty."

So sang the jolly mariners on the good ship Pinafore, and so might have
sung the members of the Chicago and All-American base-ball teams as they
sailed out through the Golden Gate and into the blue waters of the
Pacific on the afternoon of November 18, 1888. Only at that time we were
not in the least sure as to whether the Alameda was a beauty or not,
pleasant as she looked to the eye, and we had a very reasonable doubt in
our minds as to whether we were sailors "good and true." There was a
long ocean voyage before us, and the few of us that were inclined to
sing refrained from doing so lest it might be thought that, like the boy
in the wood, we were making a great noise in order to keep our courage
up. We were one day late in leaving San Francisco, it having been
originally planned to leave here on Saturday, November 17th, and this
delay of one day served to cut short our visit at Honolulu. The morning
of our departure had dawned gray and sullen and rainy, but toward noon
the clouds broke away and by two o'clock in the afternoon, the hour set
for our departure, the day had become a fairly pleasant one.

At the wharf in San Francisco, a great crowd had assembled to wish us
bon voyage, conspicuous among them being my paternal ancestor, who would
have liked well enough to make the entire trip, and who would doubtless
have done so could he have spared the necessary time from his business
at Marshalltown. Here, too, we bade farewell to Jim Hart, Van Haltren
and others of the party who had accompanied us on our trip across the
country, and who were now either going to return to their homes or spend
the winter in San Francisco. Hardly had we left the narrow entrance to
the harbor, known as the Golden Gate, and entered the deep blue waters
of the Pacific before a heavy fog came down upon the surface of the
deep, shutting out from our gaze the land that we were fast leaving, and
that we were not again destined to see for many months. The steamer was
now rising and falling on the long swells of the Pacific Ocean, but so
gently as to be scarcely perceptible, except to those who were
predisposed to seasickness, and to whom the prospects of a long voyage
were anything but pleasant. I am a fairly good sailor myself, and,
though I have been seasick at times, this swell that we now encountered
bothered me not in the least. Some ten mil