ouver Wyllard and Dampier were
very busy. They had various difficulties to contend with, for while they
would have preferred to slip away to sea as quietly as possible a
British vessel's movements are fenced about with many formalities, and
they did not wish to ship a white man who could be dispensed with.
Wyllard knew there were sailors and sealers in Vancouver and down Puget
Sound who would have gone with him, but there was a certain probability
of their discussing their exploits afterwards in the saloons ashore,
which was about the last thing that he desired. It was essential that he
should avoid notoriety as much as possible.

He had further trouble about obtaining provisions and general
necessaries, for considerably more attention than the free-lance sealers
cared about was being bestowed upon the North, and he did not desire to
arouse the curiosity of the dealers as to why he was filling his lazaret
up with Arctic stores. He obviated that difficulty by dividing his
orders among all of them, and buying as little as possible. Dampier
proved an adept at the difficult business, and eventually the schooner
_Selache_, painted a pale green, crept out from the Narrows, at dusk one
evening, under all plain sail, with her big main-boom making at least a
fathom beyond her taffrail. On board were Wyllard, Dampier, and two
other white men. A week later the _Selache_ sailed into a deep,
rock-walled inlet on the western coast of Vancouver Island. At the
settlement the storekeeper made no difficulty about selling Wyllard all
his flour and canned goods at higher figures than there was any
probability of obtaining from the local ranchers.

The _Selache_ slid down the inlet again, and lay for several days in a
forest-shrouded arm near the mouth of it. When she once more dropped her
anchor off a Siwash rancherie far up on the wild west coast, she was
painted a dingy gray, and her sawn-off boom just topped her stern. One
does not want a great main-boom in the northern seas, and a big mainsail
needs men to handle it. Wyllard, however, shipped several sea-bred
Indians who had made perilous voyages on the trail of the seal and
halibut in open canoes. All of them had also sailed in sealing
schooners. Their comrades sold him furs, and filled part of the hold
with redwood billets and bark for the stove, for he had not considered
it advisable to load too much Wellington coal.

Wyllard pushed out into the waste Pacific, and once when a beau