e one long to coil up
one's ropes on land, the customs and ways of which I had finally
almost forgotten. And so when times for freighters got bad, as at last
they did, and I tried to quit the sea, what was there for an old
sailor to do? I was born in the breezes, and I had studied the sea as
perhaps few men have studied it, neglecting all else. Next in
attractiveness, after seafaring, came ship-building. I longed to be
master in both professions, and in a small way, in time, I
accomplished my desire. From the decks of stout ships in the worst
gales I had made calculations as to the size and sort of ship safest
for all weather and all seas. Thus the voyage which I am now to
narrate was a natural outcome not only of my love of adventure, but of
my lifelong experience.

One midwinter day of 1892, in Boston, where I had been cast up from
old ocean, so to speak, a year or two before, I was cogitating whether
I should apply for a command, and again eat my bread and butter on the
sea, or go to work at the shipyard, when I met an old acquaintance, a
whaling-captain, who said: "Come to Fairhaven and I'll give you a
ship. But," he added, "she wants some repairs." The captain's terms,
when fully explained, were more than satisfactory to me. They included
all the assistance I would require to fit the craft for sea. I was
only too glad to accept, for I had already found that I could not
obtain work in the shipyard without first paying fifty dollars to a
society, and as for a ship to command--there were not enough ships to
go round. Nearly all our tall vessels had been cut down for
coal-barges, and were being ignominiously towed by the nose from port
to port, while many worthy captains addressed themselves to Sailors'
Snug Harbor.

The next day I landed at Fairhaven, opposite New Bedford, and found
that my friend had something of a joke on me. For seven years the joke
had been on him. The "ship" proved to be a very antiquated sloop
called the _Spray,_ which the neighbors declared had been built in the
year 1. She was affectionately propped up in a field, some distance
from salt water, and was covered with canvas. The people of Fairhaven,
I hardly need say, are thrifty and observant. For seven years they had
asked, "I wonder what Captain Eben Pierce is going to do with the old
_Spray?"_ The day I appeared there was a buzz at the gossip exchange:
at last some one had come and was actually at work on the old _Spray._
"Breaking her up