170 MYSTIC ISLES 



Steve came back with a memorandum book in which 

 he had kept day by day the history of the voyage. 

 But it was in Dutch, and I could not read it. I made 

 him comfortable in a deep-bottomed rocker, and I jot- 

 ted down my understanding of the honest sailor's Rot- 

 terdam English as he himself translated his ample notes 

 in his native tongue. I pieced these out with answers 

 to my questions, for often Steve's English was more 

 puzzling than pre-Chaucer poetry. 



The El Dorado was a five-masted schooner, twelve 

 years old, and left Astoria, Oregon, for Antofagasta, 

 Chile, on a Friday, more than seven months before, with 

 a crew of eleven all told: the captain, two mates, a Ja- 

 panese cook, and seven men before the mast. She was 

 a man-killer, as sailors term sailing ships poorly 

 equipped and undermanned. The crew were of all 

 sorts, the usual waterfront unemployed, wretchedly paid 

 and badly treated. The niggardliness of owners of 

 ships caused them to pick up their crews at haphazard 

 by paying crimps to herd them from lodging-houses and 

 saloons an hour or two before sailing to save a day's 

 wages. Once aboard, they were virtual slaves, subject 

 to the whims and brutality of the officers, and forfeiting 

 liberty and even life if they refused to submit to all 

 conditions imposed by these petty bosses. 



Often the crimps brought aboard as sailors men who 

 had never set foot on a vessel. On the El Dorado few 

 were accustomed mariners, and the first few weeks were 

 passed in adjusting crew and officers to one another, 

 and to the routine of the overloaded schooner. When 

 they were fifteen days out they spoke a vessel, which 

 reported them, and after that they saw no other. The 



