From the decks of stout ships in the worst gales I had made calculations as to the size and sort of ship safest for all weather and all seas.

Thus the voyage which I am now to narrate was a natural outcome not only of my love of adventure, but of my lifelong experience.
One midwinter day of 1892, in Boston, where I had been cast up from old ocean, so to speak, a year or two before, I was cogitating whether I should apply for a command, and again eat my bread and butter on the sea, or go to work at the shipyard, when I met an old acquaintance, a whaling-captain, who said: "Come to Fairhaven and I'll give you a ship.

But," he added, "she wants some repairs." The captain's terms, when fully explained, were more than satisfactory to me.

They included all the assistance I would require to fit the craft for sea.

I was only too glad to accept, for I had already found that I could not obtain work in the shipyard without first paying fifty dollars to a society, and as for a ship to command--there were not enough ships to go round.