I spent a season in my new craft fishing on the coast, only to find
that I had not the cunning properly to bait a hook. But at last the
time arrived to weigh anchor and get to sea in earnest. I had resolved
on a voyage around the world, and as the wind on the morning of April
24,1895, was fair, at noon I weighed anchor, set sail, and filled away
from Boston, where the _Spray_ had been moored snugly all winter. The
twelve-o'clock whistles were blowing just as the sloop shot ahead
under full sail. A short board was made up the harbor on the port
tack, then coming about she stood seaward, with her boom well off to
port, and swung past the ferries with lively heels. A photographer on
the outer pier at East Boston got a picture of her as she swept by,
her flag at the peak throwing its folds clear. A thrilling pulse beat
high in me. My step was light on deck in the crisp air. I felt that
there could be no turning back, and that I was engaging in an
adventure the meaning of which I thoroughly understood. I had taken
little advice from any one, for I had a right to my own opinions in
matters pertaining to the sea. That the best of sailors might do worse
than even I alone was borne in upon me not a league from Boston docks,
where a great steamship, fully manned, officered, and piloted, lay
stranded and broken. This was the _Venetian._ She was broken
completely in two over a ledge. So in the first hour of my lone voyage
I had proof that the _Spray_ could at least do better than this
full-handed steamship, for I was already farther on my voyage than
she. "Take warning, _Spray,_ and have a care," I uttered aloud to my
bark, passing fairylike silently down the bay.

The wind freshened, and the _Spray_ rounded Deer Island light at the
rate of seven knots.

Passing it, she squared away direct for Gloucester to procure there