After close to two and a half months at sea we had reached the turning point on the long course to Honolulu. The Atlantic with its trials lay behind us, and just in our wake the sullen waters of the Horn lashed themselves against the coast of Terra Del Fuego. Ahead stretched the broad Pacific, greatest of oceans, and fraught with every angle of adventure that comes to the men who sail. Indeed the sailing of a great ship like the Fuller is the rarest kind of sport from the standpoint of seamanship, where every stitch of canvas is made to draw to its full capacity in every wind that blows. From the cold latitudes of the Cape up to abreast of Valparaiso, we had good lively sailing. Great rollers followed us, for the winds were mostly fair, and, as the seas overtook us and expended themselves to the north, we drove onward, cutting down the latitude in record time; the cape pigeons were left behind, but several albatross formed a convoy almost to the edge of Capricorn.

During these weeks of strenuous weather a favored few of us were told off to lay up sennet for use in making chafing mats, and as "service" on the backstays, where subject to the wear of gear. We would perch ourselves on the coils of rope stowed on the fore hatch tarpaulin under the fo'c'sle head, where we were sheltered from the weather and at the same time within easy call from aft.

Frenchy was the leading sailor in these arts and taught us to lay up round, flat, and French sennet. The less skilled men busied themselves in making nettles and foxes, using the primitive "spinning jinney," and rubbing down the small stuff with canvas to "smooth" it before balling. Here, too, we were initiated into the fine points of marling spike work, Frenchy, Brenden, and Jimmy Marshall showing the less knowing ones how to turn in many a splice and knot. Turk's heads of three, five, and seven strands were made, and the more difficult series of four, six and eight strands were mastered by some of us. Jimmy worked a wonderful set of manropes for the after companion, crosspointing them in red, white and blue, and topping them with rose knots.

I was delighted to pick up a vast amount of interesting and useful knowledge about the different knots and hitches used at sea. How many sailors today can properly cast a carrick bend, turn in a mariner's splice, or a Flemish eye, or work a cringle into a Bolt rope? Hitchen, of the starboard watch, taught us how to make the English bag knot, an intricate and beautiful formation cast in the bight of a line.

Our work under the fo'c'sle head got all hands started, and during many a dismal wet dog watch we practiced the forming of every knot from the bowline down; Peter, the boy, and myself trying to outdo each other in the variety of our achievements. Frenchy taught us a new way to form that "king of knots," the bowline, in which the loop is passed through the gooseneck twice, forming a double loop, a most useful knot employed in the French Navy. When a man is to be lowered over side, he sits in one of the loops and the other is passed under his arm pits, the gooseneck coming against his chest. His weight tautens the part under the arms, and it is impossible for a man to drop out of this bowline, even though he becomes unconscious.

In this manner much of the unrecorded lore of the sea was passed on to us in the Fuller as the same things have been handed down through the ages since the Phoenicians, the Norsemen, and the more ancient sailors of Cathay first rigged their barks, fashioning their bends and hitches in the same manner as the sailors of today. Where the marvelous knots originated, no one can tell. Who invented them, no one knows; but we do know that the rope craft of the sea is standard and defies improvement. It takes time to learn the knots, bends, hitches, and splices; how much longer it must have taken to discover them can only be imagined.

In time, much of this will be entirely superseded by wire and steel, as indeed all lower standing rigging is already of wire. But turnbuckles and riveted plates are part of the metal ships, unyielding and stiff, that buckle the hollow steel masts, or sheer the channel plates clean from the hull, when wrenched by the resistless power of the sea.

In the days of wood, of tough live oak, and tarred hemp lanyards, with their "give" and "spring," the old style rigging knots and splices endured for thousands of years. Can steel and steam resist the hands of time as well?

On the Fuller we were taught that everything had to be done just so to be "shipshape and Bristol fashion," as the old sea phrase has it. It was always:

Worm and parcel with the lay,
Then turn and serve the other way.

And the humblest tools have had their form decreed since the art of seamanship began. The serving board and the serving mallet used by Noah; the fid, the marling spike, the sewing palm, and the caulking iron, are the ultimate tools of the most ancient handicraft; the art of building and rigging ships. We used all of these implements with industry as the blustery weather sent us up from the Horn to Honolulu. We saw how able sailors fit a cringle to the tough four-stranded hempen bolt ropes on the storm canvas; we learned the proper way to strop a block, with the splice where it belongs, as every sailor knows, and the throat seizing frapped and hitched in sailor fashion.

The hours spent under the fo'c'sle head during those days of the voyage were not so tedious. The Horn was behind us and the prospect of fine weather ahead. Yarning was always going on, and often we spent the dog watches in making fancy plaitings and knottings for sea chest covers and the like. I realized that such men as Marshall, Old Smith, Hitchen, Axel, Brenden, and Frenchy were of a dwindling breed, soon to be as rare as the makers of stone axes, or the seamen of the Roman galleys.

One other sailor of the ship's company asked odds of no one in the range of his knowledge of the sea. Whatever else we may have thought of him, we were forced to acknowledge Mr. Zerk a seaman of the most accomplished sort. Versed in the art of wire splicing and up to every dodge in sailmaking and rigging, he combined the ability of the marling spike man with the gift of the larger seamanship involved in the handling of a vessel under all conditions. If his eye ever lights on this, and I hope it will, I herewith accord to him the full measure of my admiration, for the combination of these two types of sailor is rare; as rare as the few remaining ships of the school that brought him forth.

The Fuller was a wooden vessel, Bath built, and coppered, not with the beautiful "red copper" we read about in Clark Russell, but with a composition resembling brass, tough, yellow, and antifouling; a less expensive sheathing than the pure copper, and, to my mind, every bit as good a color, the bright yellow, between the deep blue sea and the black hull, striking a pleasing line that glints like gold when the sun just hits it at the proper angle.

Our ship was a full-bodied model, really a medium clipper, surprisingly sharp, and with a clean run aft that gave her a handy pair of heels in any kind of a favorable wind. Like most ships "of a certain age," the old girl was troubled with her timbers and joints. These had an uncomfortable way of sliding over each other and complaining in a truly agonizing manner.

"She has lots of 'give' to her," one of the men remarked on our running into the first sea after leaving port.

The working of the vessel's timbers kept her bilge "sweet" by admitting a liberal quantity of nice cool sea water seeping in all the way from the garboard strake to the channels, a circumstance that necessitated constant pumping, back breaking labor that in heavy weather continued during the whole of the twenty-four hours, with two hands bending over the lee bilge pump. The wheel, the lookout at night, and the bilge pump, were taken in rotation by all hands. For back breaking, soul destroying labor, nominate the bilge pump. I had a standing offer in the fo'c'sle to stand two wheels for one bilge pump, Scouse and Fred and Martin being my best customers until I was dated up so far in advance on the steering that I had to take this on as well as the pumping, which came along oftener as it called for two men.

In the matter of small trading we did a thriving business in the fo'c'sle, some of us even branching out into foreign trade with the starboard watch. I was the one to introduce this practice on board the Fuller, a relic of my schoolship days, when pools were formed in the different messes and five and ten rations of cold corned beef traded off for potatoes, or potatoes and butter paid out as rental for the use of the precious frying pans of which there were a few on board. When I worked out a system of credits for different kinds of grub on the Fuller it was found to be a source of diversion and made possible some adjustment along the lines of personal taste, in the matter of our meals. We had stock fish every once in a while, no doubt as a concession to the Scandinavian contingent, to be found in every ship that sails the seas. I invariably passed off my share of this delicacy to Fred or Martin and would be credited with their rations of apple jack, a stew of musty dried apples; or I would contract for half of their whack of lime juice and vinegar.

Mr. Zerk, with whom I always was a favorite, that is until we got to Honolulu, occasionally gave me a jar of preserves, of which he had a large store. These were home-made pickles and jams, and when brought into the fo'c'sle caused quite a commotion.

"Rats with 'im and 'is rotten marmerlade," declared Jimmy in great dudgeon when I brought forward the first fruits of my "stand in."

"Eat it yerself but don't ast no self-respectin' man to touch it," was the sarcastic way in which the haughty Marshall voiced his sentiments. "Wot do you say?" he demanded, glaring about the fo'c'sle to see if anyone dared dispute him.

"Righto," piped up Joe. "That rotten skunk aft has poisoned the stuff, I'll bet."

"No, it's good," I declared, dipping in with the tip of my sheath knife. It was a jar of very red cherry jam. It also had a very pleasant aroma as well as a pleasing taste. I purposely took a second very large helping and could see that the temptation to fall was great.

"Here, Frenchy, don't eat any, now. Just taste it, perhaps it does taste a little funny." Frenchy tasted. "I don't know. It does taste funny," he said.

"Here, gimme a piece o' tack," and Joe was sampling the jam very liberally.

In a moment all hands, including Jimmy, were tasting it, and all declared it tasted funny. As a matter of fact it did taste very funny if we accepted apple jack as a standard.

As the last smear of jam was cleaned from the jar the hypercritical Jimmy had the nerve to remark, "That was the rottenest marmerlade I ever tasted."

However, after that no questions were raised when I brought a donation forward, though to tell the truth these treats were scarce, as the mate's private stock ran out long before we got to Honolulu.