In the evening of September 3rd, at about Lat. 34° north, Long. 133° west, we encountered our first fog, and from that time on were hampered more or less by thick weather all the way to port, which we reached a week later. The brilliant tropical days of sunshine and squalls succeeded to dull temperate days of much cloudiness and little wind and rain. Some days the fog was high and troublesome only in making observations impossible; on others it settled down close to the sea in banks so dense that the main truck was not visible from the deck. On these latter occasions, though it was not likely that there was another ship within 500 miles, prudence had the call and our little hand-cranked fog-horn—the same that had figured in the revels of our guests the night that the yacht nearly went on the rocks of Oahu—was kept incessantly at work.
Between fogs and light and baffling winds, our progress for the latter half of this traverse was slower than for any other similar period of the voyage. On but three of the last nine days did the yacht log over 100 miles, these being the 4th of September, 153 miles, and the 8th, 150 miles. The runs for the other five days were twenty-six, forty-six, forty-seven, eighty-seven, and sixty-seven miles, respectively. The winds, for the most part, were northeasterly, but the comparatively good run of the 8th was made with a very light but steady breeze from the west.
Several land birds came aboard on the morning of the 10th, and not long afterward the brown slopes of Santa Rosa Island took shape through the lifting fog. The heavens were overcast all day, but for a brief space in the afternoon a long strip of cloud ran back across the east like a sliding door, and through the rift we had a brief glimpse of the rugged Sierra Madres, a hundred miles distant, standing sharp and distinct in a flood of sunshine against a vivid background of California sky.
Doing the best we could with puffs of wind that came by turn from all points of the compass, we crept along at three or four miles an hour until midnight. Then it fell dead calm, and during the next eight hours the log recorded but a single mile. This was broken by a light westerly breeze and before it, wing-and-wing, we went groping in through the fog, watching for a land-fall that would give us our position. This appeared at noon, when the familiar cliffs of Point Vicente began showing in dark brown patches through the thinning mist off the port bow, distant about five miles. Three hours later the Commodore was able to close the log of Lurline with the following entry:
September 11th, three P. M.—"Anchored near our old mooring in San Pedro outer harbour, having been away seven months and seven days, travelling 13,500 miles without accident or serious trouble."
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I have left the three preceding paragraphs as originally written. The presence of a man of Dr. Solf's outstanding ability in such comparatively unimportant possessions as the German Samoas has always been a good deal of a puzzle to me, though a possible reason for it was suggested by a remark dropped by Frederick William, the late Crown Prince, whom I met in the course of his visit to India in the autumn of 1911.
"Perhaps Apia is not so unimportant to us as you may think," he blurted out impatiently when I told him it had always seemed strange to me that Germany had kept a man of Cabinet calibre (Solf had recently been recalled to Berlin to become Colonial Secretary) for a decade in a colony which appeared to have but the slightest of political and commercial prospects. "Or, at least, we are hopeful of developing a considerable trade there in time," he added somewhat confusedly, as though his first hasty words might have implied more than he intended.