I found by the amount of work done in three minutes' or less time that I had by no means grown stiff-jointed on the voyage; anyhow, scurvy had not set in, and being now within a few degrees of home, I might complete the voyage, I thought, without the aid of a doctor.
Yes, my health was still good, and I could skip about the decks in a lively manner, but could I climb?
The great King Neptune tested me severely at this time, for the stay being gone, the mast itself switched about like a reed, and was not easy to climb; but a gun-tackle purchase was got up, and the stay set taut from the masthead, for I had spare blocks and rope on board with which to rig it, and the jib, with a reef in it, was soon pulling again like a "sodger" for home.

Had the _Spray's_ mast not been well stepped, however, it would have been "John Walker" when the stay broke.

Good work in the building of my vessel stood me always in good stead.
On the 23d of June I was at last tired, tired, tired of baffling squalls and fretful cobble-seas.

I had not seen a vessel for days and days, where I had expected the company of at least a schooner now and then.

As to the whistling of the wind through the rigging, and the slopping of the sea against the sloop's sides, that was well enough in its way, and we could not have got on without it, the _Spray_ and I; but there was so much of it now, and it lasted so long! At noon of that day a winterish storm was upon us from the nor'west.