Only he can't get the _Glarus_ for the attempt.
For the trip to the island after B. 300 was the last occasion on which
the _Glarus_ will smell blue water or taste the trades. She will never
clear again. She is lumber.
And yet the _Glarus_ on this very blessed day of 1902 is riding to her
buoys off Sausalito in San Francisco Bay, complete in every detail (bar
a broken propeller shaft), not a rope missing, not a screw loose, not a
plank started--a perfectly equipped steam-freighter.
But you may go along the "Front" in San Francisco from Fisherman's Wharf
to the China steamships' docks and shake your dollars under the seamen's
noses, and if you so much as whisper _Glarus_ they will edge suddenly
off and look at you with scared suspicion, and then, as like as not,
walk away without another word. No pilot will take the _Glarus_ out; no
captain will navigate her; no stoker will feed her fires; no sailor will
walk her decks. The _Glarus_ is suspect. She has seen a ghost.
* * * * *
It happened on our voyage to the island after this same B. 300. We had
stood well off from shore for day after day, and Hardenberg had shaped
our course so far from the track of navigation that since the
_Benevento_ had hulled down and vanished over the horizon no stitch of
canvas nor smudge of smoke had we seen. We had passed the equator long
since, and would fetch a long circuit to the southard, and bear up
against the island by a circuitous route.
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