As for aging, why, the dial of my life was turned back till my friends all said, "Slocum is young again." And so I was, at least ten years younger than the day I felled the first tree for the construction of the _Spray_.
My ship was also in better condition than when she sailed from Boston on her long voyage.

She was still as sound as a nut, and as tight as the best ship afloat.

She did not leak a drop--not one drop! The pump, which had been little used before reaching Australia, had not been rigged since that at all.
The first name on the _Spray's_ visitors' book in the home port was written by the one who always said, "The _Spray_ will come back." The _Spray_ was not quite satisfied till I sailed her around to her birthplace, Fairhaven, Massachusetts, farther along.

I had myself a desire to return to the place of the very beginning whence I had, as I have said, renewed my age.

So on July 3, with a fair wind, she waltzed beautifully round the coast and up the Acushnet River to Fairhaven, where I secured her to the cedar spile driven in the bank to hold her when she was launched.