ame a crash, followed by a
small avalanche of broken timber, while the ship quaked in her watery
bed. I thought of dynamite and the _Dies Irae_; but almost immediately
the cabin-boy, who appeared with the matutinal coffee, said it was only
the _Olympian_, the fashionable Sound steamer, that had run into us, as
was her custom. She is always running into something, and she succeeded
in carrying away a portion of our stern gear on this occasion.
Nevertheless, we were delayed only a few hours; for the _Olympian_ was
polite enough not to strike us below the water-line, and so by high noon
we were fairly under way.

From my log-book I take the following: This is slow and easy sailing--a
kind of jog-trot over the smoothest possible sea, with the paddles
audibly working every foot of the way. We run down among the San Juan
Islands, where the passages are so narrow and so intricate they make a
kind of watery monogram among the fir-lined shores. A dense smoke still
obscures the sun,--a rich haze that softens the distance and lends a
picturesqueness that is perhaps not wholly natural to the locality,
though the San Juan Islands are unquestionably beautiful.

The Gulf of Georgia, the Straits of Fuca, and Queen Charlotte Sound are
the words upon the lips of everybody. Shades of my schoolboy days! How
much sweeter they taste here than in the old geography class! Before us
stretches a wilderness of islands, mostly uninhabited, which penetrates
even into the sunless winter and the shadowless summer of Behring Sea.

As for ourselves, Old Probabilities has got down to business. He has
opened an impromptu peripatetic school of navigation, and triumphantly
sticks a pin into every point that tallies with his yard-square chart.
The evangelist has his field-glass to his eye in search of the
unregenerated aborigines. The swell tourists are much swollen with
travel; they loosen the belts of their Norfolks, and at intervals affect
a languid interest in this mundane sphere. There are delightful people
on board--many of them--and not a few others. There are bevies of
girls--all young, all pretty; and all, or nearly all, bubbling over with
hearty and wholesome laughter.

What richness! A good, clean deck running the whole length of the ship;
a cosy and cheerful social hall, with a first-class upright piano of
delicious tone, and at least a half dozen creditable performers to
awaken the soul of it; a good table, good weather, good luck, and
posi