Slocum sails from Yarmouth on July 2, 1895, waving goodbye to the Nova Scotia coast. Off Sable Island he heaves the lead in thick fog. On July 5 the Spray steers herself, and at sunset the smiling full moon rises at the end of the bowsprit; Slocum salutes it: 'Good evening, sir!'

"Good evening, sir," I cried; "I'm glad to see you." Many a long talk since then I have had with the man in the moon; he had my confidence on the voyage.

On North Mountain in Nova Scotia, young Joshua Slocum shows off a whittled model boat that he says will sail round the world. As cook on a fishing schooner his first duff starts a mutiny and he is chucked out. Twenty years later he is master of the Northern Light, the finest American ship afloat.

Thus I came "over the bows," and not in through the cabin windows, to the command of a ship.

On a Boston wharf in the winter of 1892, an old whaling captain offers Slocum a ship that wants some repairs. In Fairhaven the 'ship' turns out to be the ancient Spray, propped up under canvas in a field, and the neighbors ask if he is breaking her up. By spring a new oak keel and ribs are up, and a whaling captain calls her fit to smash ice, but will she pay?

The "ship" proved to be a very antiquated sloop called the Spray, which the neighbors declared had been built in the year 1.

Slocum calks the new Spray's hull beside a blossoming cherry tree while a clam-digger warns that the cotton will crawl. More passers-by agree, Captain Pierce laughs and asks how fast it will crawl, and Bruno the dog wags his tail. The cotton never crawls: the Spray is launched and sits on the water like a swan, but a neighbor asks if she will pay.

As she rode at her ancient, rust-eaten anchor, she sat on the water like a swan.

At noon on April 24, 1895, factory whistles blow and a photographer on the pier snaps the Spray as Slocum sails out of Boston alone. Not a league out he passes the steamer Venetian, broken in two on a ledge, and tells the Spray to take warning. Then she runs at seven knots, throwing a rainbow from her bow.

"Take warning, Spray, and have a care," I uttered aloud to my bark, passing fairylike silently down the bay.

Coming into Gloucester alone for the first time, the Spray tears toward the wharf while fishermen shout that she will brain herself; Slocum springs forward to down the jib. She kisses the pile gently, an old skipper cheers that he couldn't have done better if he weighed a ton, and Slocum keeps a careless look though he is out of breath. Two weeks later he fits out with gifts and half a dory.

"You couldn't 'a' done it better," cried an old skipper, "if you weighed a ton!"

Leaving Gloucester, the Spray passes a tall factory where workers wave handkerchiefs from every window and call out to ask why Slocum sails alone. That night on Cashes Ledge he dozes and dreams his anchor has hooked a whale that tows the Spray away at great speed, then wakes in yellow oilskins to a real gale with scud flying across the moon.

I had read somewhere of a fishing-schooner hooking her anchor into a whale, and being towed a long way and at great speed. This was exactly what happened to the Spray--in my dream!

At dusk on May 10 the Spray coasts past the Island of Frogs, where a million frogs croak and Slocum waves goodbye to the concert. Off Briar's Island he asks a fisherman the way, and the fisherman answers only with questions: where from, alone, no dog nor no cat? At Yarmouth a merchant sells him a tin clock with a smashed face for a dollar, the only timepiece he will carry round the world.

The price of it was a dollar and a half, but on account of the face being smashed the merchant let me have it for a dollar.