Captain Nickerson drove the Kelvinhaugh in genuine “Down-east” fashion, and the big barque made the best speed it was possible to attain in such a model, and with such a weak crew. The cheap gear gave trouble, sheets parted, shackle-pins broke, braces carried away, and the sail-maker—who had looked for a fairly easy time in a new ship with new gear—was kept busy mending split sails, while the men had their fill of bending and unbending canvas. “Nah yer gets an h’idear o’ wot h’its like h’on them ruddy Bluenose packets!” growled a seaman. “Ye spends orl yer watches h’on deck wiv the hand-billy and the strop and ascrapin’, apaintin’ and apolishin’ h’of ’em, and orl yer watches below sendin’ dahn, amendin’ and abendin’ th’ bloomin’ canvas they busts h’in their sail draggin’. Ho, them’s th’ perishin’ packets for ’ard work, me sons! Them Bluenose mytes, like h’our fella there, lies h’awake nights thinkin’ up work for the ’ands, they does, bli’me!”

“A reg’lar plug!” Nickerson would growl, when, with a stiff breeze and under all the sail she’d stand, the log would only record a speed of nine or ten knots. These were records for the Kelvinhaugh! Her usual gait was around five and six sea miles per hour with breezes in which a clean-lined British or American clipper would be running her two hundred and forty miles from noon to noon.

The Nova Scotian was no believer in ambling along. He slept during the day and kept the deck at night, driving the big barque along by every trick of wind-coaxing he knew. In the “variables” off the Chilean coast he box-hauled her in the flukey airs, and when the squalls came down, it would be—“Stand by yer r’yal halliards!”—but no command to “clew up and let go” would be given unless the skipper judged the weight of the wind to be too much for sail and mast to stand. Nickerson would sooner split a sail than take it in—so the hands averred—but headway is more often made at the expense of canvas than by mothering it, as the Yankee clipper ship records show.

From the strenuous, desperate labors of the high latitudes, the crew progressed to the monotonous grind of scraping, chipping rust, and painting. Decks were sanded and scrubbed clean to new wood and then oiled; rigging was set up and “rattled down,” or rather “up,” as the fashion now is, and Donald, with the other two boys, had his fill of tarring and slushing. Nickerson’s liberal use of the ship’s paint would have caused David McKenzie to sweat blood could he have seen it, but by the time the barque had crossed the Pacific equator, she was scraped, scrubbed, painted and varnished until she looked like a yacht inboard. The running gear was overhauled from spanker-sheet to flying-jib down-haul; the standing rigging was tarred down and set up bar taut, and the brass-work—what there was of it—shone until it glittered like new-minted gold in the sun. All of this spelt “work,” and Martin and Thompson would feel that they had done all they could do in “sprucing her up,” but the artistic eye and labor finding imagination of the skipper would suggest some other job “to keep the hands from gittin’ hog-fat an’ lazy”—even to the extent of polishing “Charley Noble”—the galley funnel.

Through the sweltering heat of the “Line” and its heavy down-pours and thunderstorms, the Kelvinhaugh was coaxed into the north-east trades again, and when the Tropic of Cancer had been crossed, the crew felt that they were almost in port and they fervently longed for the day when they could set foot on shore once more. Would they ship in the Kelvinhaugh again? Not by a perishin’ condemned sight! They had had enough of her—these lean, taut-muscled sea-wolves. Their voyage in the ship had been a nightmare, and their desire to “hit the beach” was accentuated by the daily lessening quantity and bad quality of the beef, pork, flour and biscuit which was being served out. The voyage had been over-long and food was running low. Fresh water had been secured in the tropical down-pours, but the tanks were foul through want of liming. Even the lime-juice—a feature of British sailing-ships on long voyages—was scarce and only served to those men who showed symptoms of scurvy.

McKenzie—the pale-faced, sensitive little mother’s boy of six months back—had developed into a lithe, hard-muscled youth—“tough as a church rat,” as the skipper remarked—and he had thrived wonderfully in the cruel grind of “lime-juice” seafaring. As a sailor, he was far ahead of the other two boys—thanks to Hinkel’s hounding and Nickerson’s drilling. Moore was useless, and would never amount to anything at sea. He was the stuff “they don’t make sailors of,” as Martin sarcastically remarked, while Jenkins, though a willing lad and of considerably more sea experience than McKenzie, was slow to learn and was of the kind that acquired knowledge in time through sub-consciousness of repeated lessons and dint of much driving them in. Compared with his previous voyage on another ship, his experiences in the Kelvinhaugh had sickened him, and he talked of “cutting his stick” and serving the balance of his time before the mast in another ship.

In the less strenuous hours of the tropic latitudes, Donald had time to think, and he made up his mind not to remain by the Kelvinhaugh. His life on her had knocked his ideas of the future “galley west,” and while he intended to remain at sea-faring, he did not plan to serve out his time under the McKenzie house-flag. Nickerson’s ominous advice had impressed him. He felt that the skipper knew more than he cared to tell him, and if the Nova Scotian would keep his word, he would follow his fortunes and take a chance on his future. In common with the inmates of fo’c’sle, half-deck and cabin, Donald looked forward to the end of the voyage. “The more the days, the more the dollars!” sailors say, but none of the Kelvinhaugh’s crowd were anxious for a long voyage pay-day.

As they crawled up the North Pacific, gossip fore-and-aft wondered what would become of Captain Muirhead. He had “lapped up” all his supply of spirits and was now sullen, sober and sick looking. For a while each day he appeared on deck, and the men wondered at Nickerson’s charity in allowing the deposed master such freedom, but the Bluenose evidently had Muirhead “jammed in a clinch,” for he made no move to secure his usurped position either by word or deed. The dis-rated Hinkel was for’ard again with his arm in a sling, and useful only to the cook. The fo’c’sle would have none of him. He was a veritable ocean leper, and ate in the galley and slept in a berth intended for a painter.

Six months and ten days out from Greenock, the Kelvinhaugh stood in and raised the land. When the hail came from a man who had been making up gaskets on the foret’gallant-yard, all hands tumbled up for a look. There was a light wind from the nor’west and they ambled towards the high coast line, which stretched as far as the eye could discern. When darkness fell it gave them a definite position in the flashing light on Estevan Point, Vancouver Island. Thrice welcome beam! Harbinger of the seaman’s yearning for stable earth, trees, grass and flowers, cosy homes, bustling streets and the concomitants of the land!

During the night, as they drifted down the coast towards the Straits of San Juan de Fuca, the crew roused a big towing hawser up onto the fo’c’sle-head; knocked the plugs out of the hawse-pipes, rove the chains through them and shackled on the anchors under the auspices of “chips” the carpenter. Overhauling the ground-tackle! Happiest of deep-sea tasks—fore-shadowing of a voyage’s end.

Dawn found them standing in between the land, with a flood tide aiding the light wind in squared yards. With the breeze fair for a run up the Straits, Nickerson intended to save a stiff tow-bill, and they held along past the Vancouver Island shore in a drizzle of rain—typical fall weather on the West Coast. Shipping was more numerous now and tramp steamers with lumber deck-loads, and three-masted schooners forged out of the haze outward-bound from British Columbian and Puget Sound ports. Early morning brought them the sight of a beautiful clipper-bowed, two-funneled Canadian Pacific liner, which flashed past them, bellowing raucously in the mist. A lithe, white-painted ghost of a ship she appeared as she slipped along at fifteen knots. “She’s bound for Yokohama, Shanghai and Hong Kong—Japan and China,” remarked Thompson to Donald. “Japan and China?” echoed McKenzie dully. “Ah, yes.... Japan and China!” Romance to him was dead, and the mention of these far-off destinations in the mystical Orient failed to awaken a spirit of world-wandering. Different, indeed, from the time, six months back, when he dreamed glorious imaginings of the coming voyage “out west,” and when the words, “Aye, I’m sailing to-morrow. ’Round the Horn to Vancouver...” conjured a wonderful vista of romantic sights and experiences.

Aye! aye! he had been around the Horn and Vancouver was a mere jog ahead, but the youthful glamor of his shore dreams was gone. To realize his dreams he had experienced hard work, hard fare and hard knocks, and the price was too heavy for the realization of the ideal. A sailor’s life...? He found himself unconsciously echoing his father’s words, “It’s a dog’s life at the best of times!”

Still, he ruminated, maybe he hadn’t been given a square deal? Maybe he had struck it tough? He thought over the yarns of his shipmates for opposition reasonings, but a mental summary of their reminiscences failed to bring up any expression from them of infatuation for a seafaring life. “Seafarin’? Aye, mate, it’s all segarry in yer bloomin’ yacht when you is the bloomin’ owner; when you lies in yer blinkin’ bunk ’til nine an’ presses th’ button for the stoo’ard to bring yer blushin’ cawfee; when you lolls around in a deck-chair or an ’ammick under an awnin’ aft an’ has another flunkey amixin’ ye up gin an’ bitters, an’ arfs-an’-arfs, an’ whiskies an’ sodies, an’ when ye’re sick o’ rollin’ about, ye jest ups an’ tells th’ skipper to run yer boat inter th’ nearest pleasant ‘arbor. That’s real seafarin’! Any other way is plain hell!” So Cock-eyed Bill expressed his ideas one night, and the growl of assent which came from the audience seemed to confirm the sentiments. To them it was all “a hard drag”—a monotonous round of drudgery in an unstable ship-world in climates torrid, temperate and frigid, and punctuated by spells of desperate effort and nerve-breaking thrills. When sailors talked of good times, they were memories of shore jaunts and sprees. The fun and pleasant memories of those sea-toilers invariably savored of “the big night we had at Red Riley’s place in ’Frisco,” or “Larrikin Mike’s dance hall in Sydney”—never at sea! And yet, in spite of it all, men would go back to the sea and the ships again—tire of “the beach” and sign and ship for another spell of knocking about. What was it? he asked himself. What was the indefinable something which irresistibly drew men back to sea-faring after drinking deep of its cup of loneliness, monotony, hardship and misery? He could not answer—not yet. He was but an initiate in the lodge of the sea. He had other degrees to master and he had not yet been ashore and alone with his sea memories. When the voyage was over and he was free from the ship and his shipmates; when he was safe on the beach and fraternizing with landsmen who knew nothing of the degree he had worked, nothing of the sea and sailormen—then would old ocean’s magical lure get aworking. His time would come—some day—if he were of the genuine Viking blood.

The wind died in the forenoon watch and in an “Irishman’s hurricane” of up-and-down drizzle, the Kelvinhaugh drifted, tide-borne, on a glassy sea. Far to the west a square-rigger was lying becalmed; the C.P.R. liner’s smoke hung low along the horizon, and the serrated peaks of the Olympics loomed high to starboard. The waters of the Straits were dotted, here and there, by fishing boats, and slabs of bark and huge tree-roots drifted past with the tide or current. Nickerson relaxed his work-bill for once, and the crew, except the wheelsman and look-out, took shelter from the rain and discussed the future.

Poor sea-children—they had all been burnt by the fire of their experiences, and all were for “slingin’ their hook” from the Kelvinhaugh. They had it all planned out. Some of the Scandinavians had friends in the fisheries and they would look them up and land a job handling salmon nets or halibut trawls. No more wind-jammering deep-water for them “by yiminy!” A green hand announced his intention of making for the Klondyke gold fields—that being the incentive which sent him fore-the-mast on the Kelvinhaugh. Some of the others planned getting work ashore, or, failing that, they would make for Puget Sound ports or San Francisco “where the boarding-house masters treat a feller right an’ a man could take a pick o’ ships to sail in ef he didn’t get drunk!” That was the ticket! ’Ware mean Scotch barques with ornamental donkey-boilers and four heavily-sparred masts and eight able seamen’s bunks forever empty in the fo’c’sles. They knew the Scotch shipowner, by cripes! It was them that invented hard work and small pay. Didn’t they start the donkey-boiler dodge? Didn’t they invent these four-masted hookers with their fore, main and mizzen sails all the same size, so that the tops’l of the one could be used on the tops’l of the other, thus saving a spare suit of sails for every mast—a Scotch money-saving dodge! And they brag of the handy four-mast barque which could carry a whacking big cargo and only needed, with the donkey, a small crew to work the ship! More Scotch shrewdness! Aye, they sat in their offices in Bothwell street, and Hope street and Neptune Chambers and thought these schemes out! The Kelvinhaugh was a sample, and when Cock-eyed Bill admitted with pride that “doin’ twelve months hard in Barlinnie Jail was a blushin’ holiday compared with this v’y’ge,” they perished and blistered their sanguinary eyes and cursed Scotch economy in ships, food, and creature comforts. Young McKenzie, listening, felt a pang of shame for the economical characteristics of his countrymen.

The muggy night found the barque still with the wind “up and down the mast.” For’ard, the crew were packing their bags and having a sing-song—the first for months. Aft, McKenzie, Jenkins and Moore (sullen no longer) yarned of their experiences and discussed the future. Donald was non-committal—“he probably would stick by the ship”; Jenkins was going to “fly the coop between two suns—clothes or no clothes” and put his time in on some other ship as a seaman ’fore-the-mast, and take his chance on securing a clean discharge. Moore had enough of the Kelvinhaugh and a sea-faring life to last him the rest of his days. He would cable “Pa” from Vancouver to send him the price of a ticket home. After a month or so’s rest, he would enter the brewery’s office, where he could make up invoices instead of gaskets. No more “Up you go, you skulker, and overhaul and stop the royal buntlines!” and perching and hopping around the lofty branches of the trees which grew from a windjammer’s decks. “It’s all right for a bally bird,” he said, and the other two loathed him for lack of sand. A “stuck sailor,” forsooth, and the beer factory would suit him handsomely!

A light southerly sprung up with the cessation of the rain in the middle watch, and “Lee fore-brace!” roused the hands out to haul the yards aft and trim sail to the wind. Early morning found them around Beechy Head, Race Island, and off Royal Roads at the entrance to Victoria Harbor, and they backed the main-yard while a pilot boarded them. He was a brother Bluenose and scrambled up the Jacob’s Ladder with a “Got here at last, cap’en!” as if he had long been expecting the ship. His boat’s crew hove up a bundle of newspapers, which Captain Nickerson took and failed to read, as they were filched shortly afterwards by the half-deckers—hungry for news and wondering if Canadian papers contained British football and cricket results.

The greetings done with, the pilot glanced around. “Cal’late, cap’en, ye’d better bring-to here in Royal Roads an’ let go yer killick. Carmanah got yer number yesterday and your Vancouver agents are sending over a big tug to lug you in. Devil of a current runs through the channel hereabouts ... pull you through them at slack water. Better clew up yer muslin naow an’ edge in an’ let go off th’ shore there. Th’ quarantine people will look ye over here, but I guess there ain’t much ailin’ your crowd but hard muscles and empty bellies.” And he chuckled reminiscently.

The barque glided slowly in to the anchorage as sails were being clewed up and the yards lowered. “Come-to hereabouts, cap’en,” said the pilot. The helmsman put the wheel over, and when the ship lost headway, the skipper sung out, “Leggo y’r anchor!” The carpenter, in the eyes of her, swung his maul and knocked out the pin of the chain-stopper, shouting “Stand clear!” as the mud-hook plunged into the water with the chain thundering and rattling through the hawse-pipe. Then came a moment of silence—a further rattle of heavy cable-links—and a jarring tremor betokened that the ship had taken up the chain and that the anchor had bitten the bottom. “Anchor’s holding, sir!” came the hail from for’ard. “Alright!” grunted Nickerson, and to Martin he said, “Naow, git her canvas stowed ... an’ make it a harbor furl. She’ll not need sail for a while naow!” His lean young face had a complacent grin as he puffed on a cigar. He had worked the old scow in, and the Kelvinhaugh had completed her first voyage under canvas—a passage of one hundred and ninety-five days.

Nickerson and the pilot went below, and the men working on the poop noticed that both they and Captain Muirhead were sitting around the saloon table chatting away in the most friendly manner. “A rum go!” they remarked. “What’s in the wind?” But the young Nova Scotian was evidently playing a game of his own. “Yes,” he was saying to the pilot, “Captain Muirhead has been a very sick man. Knocked out down south ... have had to take his place ever since. Second mate fell from aloft ... hurt....” The pilot was murmuring his sympathies and Muirhead was shaking his head as if in corroboration of Nickerson’s testimony. In truth, he did not look a well man. The long confinement had washed the sea-tan off his pock-marked features and, no doubt, his heavy drinking had affected his system.

With the rest of the hands, Donald was aloft helping to furl the sails into that neat uncreased roll which is known as a “harbor stow.” They took their time at the job. None of your lump, bulgy furls, like “a bunch of tricks,” with a bunt like a balloon and clew-lugs sticking out like a whale’s flukes, in a harbor stow. That sort of thing was all right for Cape Horn, where it was roll ’em up anyhow and get the gaskets ’round them, but the last furl had to be a furl where the canvas would lie, without a crease, like a white ribbon along the yard, and the gaskets would be passed like unto a neat serving. With sails stowed, they clambered to the deck and braced the yards faultlessly square; took up the slack in running gear and faked it down on the belaying pins in neatly stopped coils. When this was done, the Kelvinhaugh looked, in the placid water of the Roads, a proper picture of an inward-bound deep-waterman. No seaman could mistake the clean paintwork and scrubbed decks inboard and the taut rigging and well-furled sails aloft for an outward-bounder. The chafing gear on the stays and the rusty, sea-washed and red lead patched hull told its unmistakable story, for every sailor knows a wind-jammer goes to sea with a clean hull, but with cluttered decks and riggers’ snarls and “Irish pennants” (loose ends) aloft, and a ship is in her best trim after her sailormen have toiled on her between port and port.

A launch brought the port doctor out and he glanced perfunctorily at the lean, hungry-looking mob lined up on the deck for inspection. He examined Hinkel’s mended bones and muttered, “A good job—well done!” A professional compliment to Nickerson’s surgery, truly! He then went into the cabin, and when he came up again, Thompson heard him say to Nickerson, “Your skipper has a bad liver ... been drinking too much, I’m afraid.... Sick man ... better be careful!” And he went over the rail.

Shortly after the man of medicine departed, a big deep-sea tug came around a point and forged towards them. She had a huge rope fender over her bows and several wooden ones trailing along her sides. A wheel-house was perched forward on her superstructure, and it was profusely ornamented with nameboards in gilt and a spread-winged eagle crowned its roof. Donald had never seen such a tug before and he was interested in the fine points of difference between it and the low-riding, paddle-wheeled craft which had hauled them to sea over six months agone. She ranged handily alongside, with her skipper half in and half out of the wheel-house. He was in shirt-sleeves and wore a hard bowler hat, and looked like a drygoods clerk, but he knew how to handle his craft. When she was fast alongside, he sung out to the pilot, “Better get yer hook hyak (quick)!” he drawled—masticating a quid with jaws that never ceased to work. “I wanna git this big hooker through in slack water afore them skookum (strong) currents start arunnin’! This one’ll be a sight worse’n any raft o’ big timber by th’ looks o’ her, I reckon!” Punctuating his conversation with Chinook idioms, he chewed and yarned with the pilot and Nickerson while the crew prepared to get under way again.

McLean had steam up in the donkey, and it hove the anchor short amid fervent comment from the barque’s crowd. “Fust time that ruddy ornament has worked sence we left for out!” they remarked. “Pity they couldn’t ha’ used it them times we was doin’ ruddy watch-tackle drill or handlin’ them cussed yards!” Aye, but coals cost money and muscle-power was cheaper, and these were days of low freights.

In tow of the steamer, the Kelvinhaugh, with a man at her wheel, glided out of the Roads, rounded Discovery Island and pulled into Haro Strait. The pilot and Nickerson paced the poop exchanging news and views, and Nickerson evidently astonished his fellow countryman, judging from the “Waal, I swan’s!” and “Th’ hell ye say’s!” which came from the pilot’s lips. “Aye ... lucky to get here ... a slow ship,” the captain was saying.

The pilot glanced around. “New ship, too ... ye hev her spruced up. Not like aour old Bluenose packets, whittled out of the bush above tide-water, eh? A lime-juicer for discomfort ... no wheel-house to keep the man at the wheel out of the cold and the wet. Stand in the open an’ freeze an’ be damned to you! That’s th’ lime-juice way for ye!” The tug was plucking the big barque along at a faster clip than she usually made under sail and the reek of her Nanaimo coal gave the barque’s crew a tantalizing memory of Glasgow’s bituminous atmosphere. The tide was running in strong astern of the ship and helped to shove her along, but soon it was noticed to slacken when they hauled through the island-studded channels.

Donald, working on “stow away jobs,” feasted his eyes on those islands—rugged, rocky, dense with rank undergrowth and lofty with mighty cedars, spruce and red pine. Huge fallen trunks thrust their tops into the water, and mighty gnarled roots—“snags” the pilot called them—danced in the tide swirls or lay stranded on the beaches. Bare rocks were passed, upon which seals basked or slipped into the quiet water when the ships loomed near, and ever and anon, they passed fishermen in open boats, towing trolling-lines to entice the clear-water salmon. Once a Siwash Indian family in a dug-out canoe, made from a single cedar log, swung lazily under the barque’s stern, and the head of the family imperturbably continued his paddling in the wash from the “skookum sail-ship,” while his “klootch” (woman) cuffed her curious brood to the dug-out’s floor. “Yon’s an Injian,” observed McLean to Donald. “A rid Injian. There’s lots o’ them in these parts.” And Donald’s thoughts turned for a space to the stirring tales of Fenimore Cooper and the “Buffalo Bill Library.” “Do they scalp and go on the war-path nowadays, Mac?” he enquired.

The bos’n laughed. “They’re gey good at scalpin’ th’ heid aff a whusky bottle if they can get yin. Ah was a year on this coast yin time ... tradin’ ... up north. We sold them whusky for pokes o’ gold an’ skins. They’re quiet folk ... no th’ scalpin’ kind.”

Threading around the channels and dodging dangerous up-rooted trees as long as the ship’s main-yard, called for good steersmanship. “A lazy hooker!” remarked the pilot. “A slow ship in stays, I reckon?” Nickerson nodded. “Slower’n scullin’ a loaf o’ bread ’cross a tub o’ Porto Reek molasses in January!” he answered—quoting a “Down-east” phrase indicative of the extreme in tardiness. “Aye ... boxhaul her around or wear ship most of the time ... a condemned scow!” The pilot laughed. “Minds me o’ th’ time I was a kid in an ol’ three-mast schooner timber-droghin’ from Nova Scotia to the West Indies ... flat on the bottom ... wake ’ud be forrad o’ th’ fore-riggin’ ... took a whole watch to tack her in and the whole ocean for sea-room. Haul daown heads’ls an’ fores’l, sheet in mains’l an’ spanker ’n roll th’ wheel daown. Then slack yer after canvas, h’ist fores’l an’ jibs ... sheets to wind’ard ... an’ she’d git around ... maybe!” And he chuckled over the reminiscence.

From Haro Strait, they emerged into the placid waters of the Gulf of Georgia, and in a lifting of the shore haze, the wonderful beauty of the coast ranges on Vancouver Island, and the mainland burst on the vision. All around the horizon the great peaks thrust their summits into the ether and fleecy wisps of mist caressed their tree-clad slopes. Far to the east, dominating them all, Mount Baker, Queen of the Cascades, hove her snow-crowned crest almost eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea.

McKenzie was entranced with this tow-line voyage. This was the happiest day of his seafaring, and Nature’s prodigality in this wonderful country charmed and fired his imagination. He remembered his last sight of land the breadth of two continents away—a dog-toothed spur of wave-lashed granite, a splinter of stone from the tail of America’s tremendous vertebrae—Diego Ramirez rocks to the west’ard of the Horn. Aye! things were different then, but even the Ramirez were good to look upon ... a welcome milepost on a hard traverse.

In mid-afternoon, with no work to do but watch the nip of the towing hawser, and undisturbed by the fear of an oath-besprinkled command, he sat on a fo’c’sle head bitt and absorbed the wonders of that hundred-mile drag. In the words of the fare-well chantey:—

And he relaxed and dreamed and feasted his eyes and starved soul on the magnificent panorama which was unfolded with every mile the ship made up the Gulf. Aye, here was romance! The thrill of having travelled a hard, dreary road and stepping, all of a sudden, into Fairyland. Only those who have experienced it can realize the heart-hunger for the land after six months of nothing but heaving, restless sea. McKenzie forgot the sea and the ship and the voyage and unleashed his soul and imagination to appreciate the glories of the serried peaks which ringed him around, and the gem-like islets set like emeralds on the turquoise of the water.

In the dog-watch, when the sun was setting in an oriflamme of red and gold behind the western peaks, and the lazy waters of the Straits mirrored the lights and shadows in brilliant crimson, gold and blue, they towed past the Fraser River estuary, and the Sand Heads light-ship gleamed scarlet in the sun-glow. Numerous sailboats dotted the turbid flood at the mouth of the river—their occupants setting the twine to enmesh the river-seeking salmon. “Fushin’ fur salmon tae be tinned—or canned, as they ca’ it oot here,” vouchsafed McLean. “They turn oot millions o’ tins o’ salmon up yon Fraser River. Them fishermen are nearly a’ Japs, an’ there’s a wheen o’ them on this coast ... aye, an’ Chinks an’ Hindoos an’ sich-like Mehommedahs!”

It was dark when the tow-boat swung the barque around Point Grey and headed in for the Burrard Inlet Narrows. Between Prospect Point and the high-wooded slopes of the opposite shore, they pulled through a narrow channel, and the huge trees of Stanley Park commanded Jenkins’ admiration. “By golly,” he cried, “I don’t know whether it’s a trick of the moonlight or not, but did you ever see such monsters? They’re higher’n the masts of this ship!” No indeed! Donald never had, but he promised himself a closer scrutiny of those lofty trunks at the first opportunity.

Round a picturesque cliff, capped by a brilliant light, they hauled, and the City of Vancouver burst upon their vision with a blaze of twinkling electrics, which spun twisting threads on the mirror of the harbor waters. The Queen City of the West! It has been called thus, but to one sea-wearied lad it was Fairyland—a veritable Valhalla for ship-tired Vikings—and he hungered for the moment when he could set foot ashore and roam its streets. The fo’c’sle crowd gladdened at the sight of a town again, and McLean and other old-timers were busy answering eager questions. “Is the beer good an’ cheap ashore here?” or “Is this der place where dot Two Bit Hilda has dot haus mit der lager und der gals?” “Aye, aye,” McLean was saying, “ye can get a’ th’ whusky an’ gurls ye want here if ye hae th’ dollars. Let me tell ye aboot th’ time....” Donald listened carelessly to a vicious adventure. It did not affect him. He was staring longingly at the city and the snow-clad heights around and paid no attention to the excursions in vice which the crew were planning. Nature’s beauties had no place in their make-up. It was whisky and women, and most of them knew the beauty spots of the world only by the price and quality of the liquor to be procured therein. Poor devils! It was their idea of pleasure, and after what they had gone through, it was corporeal joys they appreciated rather than mental.

He was brought to things material by the warning shriek from the tow-boat’s whistle, which found an echo in the lofty heights. “Stand by, forrad!” came Nickerson’s voice. The men shambled to the bows. “Haul in yer hawser!”

The steamer slipped the rope and the barque rounded up and threw her great hull and spars athwart the moon-path. “Leggo yer anchor!” came the strident command from aft. A plunge—a roar—a rattle of chain—and silence. The awakened waters showed new facets to the moon-glare and spread in concentric rings away from the disturbing hull, and with a voice hailing from the departing tug, “We’ll berth you at five!” the Kelvinhaugh lay quiet and motionless at the end of her chain, like a tired horse that had travelled a long and weary road.