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"You won't starve," I assured him. "Think of all the food we have aboard—over three months' supply. And think of your cook! No, you will never starve aboard the Snark."

"The thing that's worrying me," Bert here broke in, "is how we're going to find room to get around on the boat. Since that windlass was set up, and the launch and life-boat lashed on deck, there is hardly room to turn around in." And Tochigi, who was always very quiet, said nothing at all.

For days, Jack and Captain Eames had been engaged in one of the most laughable arguments I have ever heard. Roscoe Eames stoutly maintained that the earth is concave of surface, and that we would all sail round on the inside of a hollow sphere; while Jack, who was willing to stick to orthodox cosmology, just as stoutly maintained that Roscoe was mistaken, and that we would sail round on the outside. Each had a number of proofs, which he adduced in the argument; and neither was to be shaken in his confidence. To this day, I think they hold divergent opinions on the subject. Captain Eames was also a vegetarian; and it was this fact that made me wonder how he was to get along satisfactorily on the Snark.

Though Jack had answered my question jestingly, I knew that he contemplated writing an extended series of articles on the home-life of the various peoples among whom we were to sojourn. He would treat of their domestic problems; social structures; problems p046 of living; cost of living as compared with the cost in the United States; education; opportunities for advancement; general tone of peoples; culture; morals; religion; how they amuse themselves; marriage and divorce problems; housekeeping, and a hundred other topics.

When we left the wharf that night, we felt more cheerful than ever. Mrs. London was right. That boat was well worth all the trouble and expense. "Barring wreck and worms," said Jack, "she'll be sailing the seas a hundred years from now."

All day Monday we worked on the Snark, besieged constantly by reporters and photographers. Jack paid Mr. L. H. Sellers his two hundred and fifty dollars, and lifted the embargo. In the afternoon we were towed out in the Bay, and an expert adjusted our compasses and other instruments for us. It was essential that these be in proper trim, the more so as not one of us knew anything about navigation except Captain Eames, and even his knowledge was of the experimental sort. Jack declared that the rest of us could learn after we were afloat. Thousands of people visited the wharf that day to take a look at us; and the photographers were busy taking snap-shots of the boat. Out in the Bay, we had with us a reporter for the Hearst papers. When he left, he took with him my last message ashore, a telegram to be sent to Independence announcing the imminence of our p047 departure. We worked all that night, stowing and packing, and getting things shipshape for our cruise to Hawaii. At high tide the next morning we were to up-anchor and away.

Daylight broke at last. That 23rd of April, 1907, I shall never forget. Thousands came down to the wharf to bid us good-bye and to wish us a pleasant and successful voyage. Photographers from a popular western magazine took what they announced would be the last views of the Snark and her crew. Among the dozens of telegrams I received was one from an Independence friend, which read: "Good-bye. Hope I may see you again." Surrounded by hundreds of people who were prophesying that we would never reach Honolulu, this telegram had a rather gruesome sound to me. Strangely enough, I never did see this friend again. I did not meet my death in the water, but he did. He drowned in one of the rivers near Independence.