ed
the wretch, bell and all, when he came to the door of the little hotel
where my prospective audience and I were dining, and with his
clattering bell and fiendish yell made noises that would awake the
dead, all over the voyage of the _Spray_ from "Boston to Bowen, the
two Hubs in the cart-wheels of creation," as the "Boomerang" afterward
said.

Mr. Myles, magistrate, harbor-master, land commissioner, gold warden,
etc., was chairman, and introduced me, for what reason I never knew,
except to embarrass me with a sense of vain ostentation and embitter
my life, for Heaven knows I had met every person in town the first
hour ashore. I knew them all by name now, and they all knew me.
However, Mr. Myles was a good talker. Indeed, I tried to induce him to
go on and tell the story while I showed the pictures, but this he
refused to do. I may explain that it was a talk illustrated by
stereopticon. The views were good, but the lantern, a thirty-shilling
affair, was wretched, and had only an oil-lamp in it.

I sailed early the next morning before the papers came out, thinking
it best to do so. They each appeared with a favorable column, however,
of what they called a lecture, so I learned afterward, and they had a
kind word for the bellman besides.

From Port Denison the sloop ran before the constant trade-wind, and
made no stop at all, night or day, till she reached Cooktown, on the
Endeavor River, where she arrived Monday, May 31, 1897, before a
furious blast of wind encountered that day fifty miles down the coast.
On this parallel of latitude is the high ridge and backbone of the
tradewinds, which about Cooktown amount often to a hard gale.

I had been charged to navigate the route with extra care, and to feel
my way over the ground. The skilled officer of the royal navy who
advised me to take the Barrier Reef passage wrote me that H. M. S.
_Orlando_ steamed nights as well as days through it, but that I, under
sail, would jeopardize my vessel on coral reefs if I undertook to do
so.

Confidentially, it would have been no easy matter finding anchorage
every night. The hard work, too, of getting the sloop under way every
morning was finished, I had hoped, when she cleared the Strait of
Magellan. Besides that, the best of admiralty charts made it possible
to keep on sailing night and day. Indeed, with a fair wind, and in the
clear weather of that season, the way through the Barrier Beef
Channel, in all sincerity, was clearer