conveniences of a roof. And here I was, with dreary and endless
vistas before me of table-setting, potato-peeling, and dish-
washing. And I was not strong. The doctors had always said that I
had a remarkable constitution, but I had never developed it or my
body through exercise. My muscles were small and soft, like a
woman's, or so the doctors had said time and again in the course of
their attempts to persuade me to go in for physical-culture fads.
But I had preferred to use my head rather than my body; and here I
was, in no fit condition for the rough life in prospect.

These are merely a few of the things that went through my mind, and
are related for the sake of vindicating myself in advance in the
weak and helpless role I was destined to play. But I thought,
also, of my mother and sisters, and pictured their grief. I was
among the missing dead of the Martinez disaster, an unrecovered
body. I could see the head-lines in the papers; the fellows at the
University Club and the Bibelot shaking their heads and saying,
"Poor chap!" And I could see Charley Furuseth, as I had said good-
bye to him that morning, lounging in a dressing-gown on the be-
pillowed window couch and delivering himself of oracular and
pessimistic epigrams.

And all the while, rolling, plunging, climbing the moving mountains
and falling and wallowing in the foaming valleys, the schooner
Ghost was fighting her way farther and farther into the heart of
the Pacific--and I was on her. I could hear the wind above. It
came to my ears as a muffled roar. Now and again feet stamped
overhead. An endless creaking was going on all about me, the
woodwork and the fittings groaning and squeaking and complaining in
a thousand keys. The hunters were still arguing and roaring like