406 ALL HANDS UP ANCHOR FOR HOME ! 
bunkers to last us some ten clays, and with our worn-out 
sails and crippled spars to take us tlie rest of that long 
and weary way, we looked doubtingly ahead at the pros- 
pect of adverse gales, and trembled over the miserable 
ship in which we felt no contideiice. We had at least 
four thousand miles to accomplish : we had to work our 
way through the Okotsk Sea, and between the Kurile 
Islands by the ‘‘fifty-passage,” and finally to cross the 
expansive breast of the Korth Pacific to San Francisco 
during the stormiest of seasons. We allowed forty days 
to do all of this in, and determined to steam until we 
had entered the Pacific, and then to save our fuel until 
within a few hundred miles of San Francisco. Thus we 
had to depend upon our sails alone to accomplish the 
intervening distance of over three thousand miles. Kow, 
as the reader already knows how the “old John” was 
wont to acquit herself under sail alone, he will readily 
see that we should have starved before reaching our port, 
had she been opposed by headwinds. Fortunately, such 
was not the case : our “ broken reed” was again 
strengthened by Him who counts the hairs of our heads 
and notes the fall of -the smallest sparrow, 
4 ; 4 : ^ ^ 
We had rounded the north cape of the island of 
Sagalicn, and were stretching across that portion of the 
Okotsk for the “fift;^-pussage,” when vee were met by a 
northeast gale which caused us to fear for the safety of 
the Palmetto and to congratulate ourselves upon our own 
absence from her dangerous anchorage. This gale soon 
blew by, and then we again commenced working for the 
passage. This we reached in a few days, but were un- 
