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I could do nothing further. I have her face before me, unforgotten over the years, and knowing that in better circumstances she could have been anything that she wanted to be.

Let us be clear about Dana's situation on the Pilgrim. When he is still a relative novice at the game and just about to round the horn, the first storm hits. It's time to "Lay out there and furl the jib!" An old Swede, the best sailor aboard, and Dana jump onto the bowsprit. They get plunged into huge seas and have to hang on for dear life, but they succeed in furling the jib "after a fashion." He is at home on the fore top-gallant yardthat's ninety to a hundred feet above a ship that is pitching every which way. On one occasion the tie parted and the yard fell while he was standing on it with one foot, and was only saved by his hold upon the rigging. Such things were made light of, or not mentioned at all, because a sailor does not wish to be reminded that his life is constantly hanging by a thread. He finds reefing the sails "a very exciting scene."

The master of the Pilgrim is a match for William Bligh of H.M.S. Bounty fame. The second mate is deposed, and there is constant trouble with the first. When they get to the California coast, the captain takes on some passengers and wanting to show them "what she can do," causes booms to break and sails to rip, and of course, the crew has to deal with it. He flogs two men, the first because he gave him his jaw, the second for asking why the first is being flogged.

"If you want to know what I flog you for, I'll tell you. It's because I like to do it!because I like to do it!It suits me! That's what I do it for!"

Running into the little harbor of San Diego, where three ships are anchored, he runs into the Lagoda, carrying away some of the Pilgrim's rigging and smashing her rail. Then he allows her to drift into the Loriotte, "carrying away a part of our starboard quarter railing, and breaking off her larboard bumpkin, and one or two stanchions above the deck." Helplessly he is drifting toward the third ship, the Ayacucho, obviously on a collision course, when the captain of that ship quickly embarks on a boat and comes aboard the Pilgrim, gives the right commands and gets her anchored safely. May God save us from the incompetent.

The years are 1834-36; that's twelve years before the beginning of the California gold rush, fourteen years before California becomes a state, twenty-five years before the beginning of the Civil War, and thirty-three

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