10 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
noon of the third day. It was a slow passage, 
fifty-one hours for 140 miles, and it was rather 
wearisome, especially the second night. We kept 
about five miles off shore, hoping in this way to 
give outlying shoals a good berth and yet avoid 
the steamer track, but we were bothered by the 
fish weirs, which are set a long way off the 
beach. At night they are marked with lanterns, 
but until we understood what these lights were, 
we were rather confused than helped by them. 
The atmosphere, too, was thick with smoke and 
haze, so that it was difficult to make out shore 
lights, and we passed inside of the Overfalls 
Lightvessel without seeing it. But by pretty 
careful steering and by keeping track of the log 
we were able to pick up enough of the offshore 
buoys to feel secure of our course and position, 
and the thunder of the sea on the long beach 
would have been sufficient warning if we had 
gone in too far. 
Toward morning of the second night we passed 
fishing vessels at anchor or drifting to one end 
of a net, the other end being marked by a boat 
with a light. The sea was at this time very 
smooth, the breeze was just strong enough to 
keep our sails quiet, and we slipped along past 
the fishermen as if on velvet without a sound. 
As soon as the increasing light made it safe, I 
lay down for an hour’s sleeping, exacting from 
the skipper a solemn promise to call me at the 
end of the hour, so that he might have a turn 
before the sunlight roused the flies and made 
sleep impossible. This was the first nap we had 
had for forty-eight hours, and I plunged into 
it so profoundly that when my hour was up, the 
skipper was obliged to come down into the cabin 
and shake me vigorously to stir me. 
We anchored behind the inner breakwater at 
noon. There is nothing here to detain the 
cruiser. The lighthouse on its great pits of 
yellow sand is the only spot of beauty in the 
landscape. The town is wholly uninteresting, 
and with a southerly breeze the stench from the 
fish works is really horrible. W*e got ice and 
w r ater, and what we needed most, a night of 
heavy sleep, and then with a steady barometer 
and weather predictions of “the same thing” 
from the station on the breakwater, we got 
under way at 4 a. m., July 1, for Sandy Hook, 
distant 125 miles. 
In making my plans beforehand I had pro¬ 
posed to go across from Delaware Breakwater 
to Montauk Point, avoiding New York and the 
familiar Sound, having counted as a matter of 
course upon getting plenty of sleep during the 
day time, when one man on deck would have 
been enough. But the unexpected pest of flies 
made sleep entirely impossible between sunrise 
and sunset. Heavy-headed as we were, their 
savage biting kept us awake, and I could not 
risk two or perhaps three more sleepless nights. 
We were short-handed for such work, and I 
therefore laid our course up the Jersey coast, 
the breeze still light southerly and the sea 
smooth. There was little of interest in this 
stretch. Atlantic City, which we passed about 
8 0 clock in the evening, was a beautiful vision 
of electric light like a necklace of shining jewels. 
I had not thought that anything electric could be 
so beautiful. In the morning a great school of 
sea porpoises, leaping and blowing with a vigor 
never shown by the sluggish porpoises of the 
Sound, enlivened our jaded nerves. But the 
night was a long struggle against sleepiness. We 
had lunch and hot coffee at midnight, we 
changed often from the wheel to the lookout, we 
talked of the most interesting things we could 
think of, but it was a long night and we quoted 
the^ words “as they that watch for the morn¬ 
ing” with full understanding of their meaning. 
I got some amusement from noting the whim¬ 
sicalities of the mind, when the senses are awake 
and the judgment is asleep. At one time I found 
that I was mistaking the lighted binnacle for a 
rather oddly shaped bowl of soup into which I 
was for some reason gazing with bowed head. 
At another time hearing the sound of the water 
under the counter as we slipped along and per¬ 
haps with a sensation of cold feet (in the literal, 
not the slang, sense), I thought I was wading 
up a stream of swiftly running water. Once I 
was startled into wakefulness by seeing the skip¬ 
per, as I thought, turn a kind of handspring and 
put his feet up into the mainsail. This was no 
doubt due to a failure to control the muscles 
of the eye, the same cause which makes a dis¬ 
tant light move with a sudden jerk when one 
is dropping asleep against his will with his eyes 
open. But morning came at last and the day 
slipped slowly on, and at five in the afternoon 
we anchored inside of Sandy Hook, under an 
oppressive pall of smoke, having been thirty- 
seven hours under way. 
I do not know whether we should count our¬ 
selves lucky in these long runs or not. It is 
slow work to spend eighty-eight hours in sail¬ 
ing 265 miles, a distance that we might rea¬ 
sonably have expected to make in half the time 
with an ordinary southwester. But there are 
plenty of worse things than slow sailing. Even 
such a negative discomfort as lying over for - 
three or four days in the stench and monotony ft 
of Delaware Breakwater would have been worse, 
not to speak of head winds or heavy weather. 
On the whole I think we were fortunate, and 
I am glad to remember that we had self-com¬ 
mand. enough to avoid increasing the tedium by 
impatience. All of us, even the youngest and 
most active, took it philosophically, reading and 
writing and occupying ourselves with odd jobs 
about the boat. We cooked and cleaned and 
\arnished, and the first afternoon was made 
joyous by a birthday celebration for which one 
of us provided the occasion, and the forethought 
of another provided a cake. 
[to be concluded.] 
Scavengers, of <he Lake. 
The wind had been blowing a gale from the 
south all day, lashing the lake into fury, and 
the waves beat savagely on the north shore, 
where we were camped. 
The next morning dawned clear and still, 
the wind having gone down with the sun the 
night before. I arose early and rowed along¬ 
shore, which was now lined with a kind of 
moss that the waves had washed up. The 
crows were unusually busy. From the trees, 
where they were exceedingly noisy, they fre¬ 
quently descended to the beach and walked 
along the edge of the water, every little while 
snatching up some morsel of food or making 
a wonderful ado over a dead fish. 
A sharp-shinned hawk seemed to be playing 
hide-and-seek with them in vigorous fashion, 
chasing the crows or being chased by them,’ 
though I saw no real passage at arms between 
them. 
Upon examination, the shore line, with its 
fringe of moss, was found to possess food in 
plenty of the kind that crows love. The line 
of moss held many bruised and battered cray¬ 
fish, an occasional dead fish and dead insects 
of various sorts, especially a large mosquito- 
bke insect which the residents called the lake 
fl\. These crows were securing breakfast, 
and in doing so were cleaning up the shore! 
They are to the lake what the scavenger 
wagon is to the city. 
Another day, when the wind was from the 
west, I found these scavengers on the east 
shore, and whenever I noticed them during a 
month’s stay on the lake, they were always 
on the leeward shore, feeding on the insects, 
mussels, crayfish, minnows and fish that the 
wa\es had made available. To a young man 
whose home is on the lake, I mentioned the 
fact that the crows kept the lake cleaner and 
sweeter than it otherwise would be, by eating 
the carrion found on the shore, thinking that 
possibly he did not appreciate their value. 
^ es, he replied, “and the buzzards, too. 
They eat dead fish, but my! they are ugly.” 
The turkey buzzard I had not recognized. 
I had seen one soaring at a distance, but mis¬ 
took it for a large hawk; but after the young 
man told me of their presence I saw them 
several times soaring over the shore after a 
heavy gale. There are not many of them in 
the Northwest, for their kind of food is scarce. 
In southern Texas, where many weak cattle 
perish in the clay-bottomed bayous, I have 
seen them soaring and circling in companies 
of hundreds, evidently in play. 
One of the most interesting, and possibly 
one of the most useful scavengers of the lake 
* 
