tion id="u32f7f229-6802-54ab-bccf-5eb5ad667517">
Ralph Stock
The Cruise of the Dream Ship Published by Good Press, 2021 EAN 4064066093761 Table of Contents " LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Dream Ship . . . . . . Frontispiece
The Reciprocal Morning Douche, Mid-Ocean
Steve at the Sextant and Peter at the Helm
The Dream Ship Passes from Atlantic to Pacific
At St. Lucia, West Indies
Launching Outrigger Canoe in the Marquesas
Pascal, the Pearl-Diving Non-starter
A Man of the Atolls
Off Nukuhiva, Marquesas Islands
Pearl-Diver About to Descend
Pearl-Divers in a Paumotan Lagoon
Mr. Mumpus's Blisters
Fish-Spearing on the Reef
Moorea, the Land of the Lizard Men
Moorea Greets the Dream Ship
The Leaning Palms
Landing on Palmerston Island
The National Sport at Palmerston Island
Dragging a Boat Through the Reef Pass
The Taro Patch
Mr. Masters Himself
The Dream Ship Bargain Sale
Thursday Island Pearling Luggers
In the Old Days of the "Floating Station" Schooner
High Holiday on a "T.I." Beach
Festival Headdress of Torres Straits Islanders
The Japanese Club
Out of the Deep
The Main Products of Torres Straits
An Islander's Home on T.I.
The Tennis Handicap
Lines of the Dream Ship, Designed by Colin Archer and Built at Porsgrund, Norway, in 1908
Sail and Rigging Plan of the Dream Ship
THE CRUISE OF THE DREAM SHIP
On dreams, and the means to realize them
Chapter I headpiece CHAPTER I
On dreams, and the means to realize them
We all have our dreams. Without them we should be clods. It is in our dreams that we accomplish the impossible; the rich man dumps his load of responsibility and lives in a log shack on a mountain top, the poor man becomes rich, the stay-at-home travels, the wanderer finds an abiding place. For more years than I like to recall my dream has been to cruise through the South Sea Islands in my own ship, and if you had ever been to the South Sea Islands, it would be yours also. They are the sole remaining spot on this earth that is not infested with big-game-shooting expeditions, globe-trotters, or profiteers, where the inhabitants know how to live, and where the unfortunate from distant and turbulent lands can still find interest, enjoyment, and peace. My dream was as impracticable as most. There was a war to be attended to and lived through if Providence so willed. There was a ship to be bought, fitted out, and provisioned on a bank balance that would fill the modern cat's-meat-man with contempt. There were the little matters of cramming into a chronically unmathematical head sufficient knowledge of navigation to steer such a ship across the world when she was bought, and of finding a crew that would work her without hope of monetary reward. The thing looked and sounded sufficiently like comic opera to deter me from mentioning it to any but a select few, and they laughed. Yet such is the driving power of a dream if its fulfilment is sufficiently desired that I write in retrospect with my vision a secure and accomplished fact. Exactly how it all came about I find it difficult to recall. I have vague recollections of crouching in dug-outs in France, and while others had recourse during their leisure to letter-cases replete with photographs of fluffy girls, I pored with equal interest over plans and designs of my dream ship. In hospital it was the same, and when a medical board politely ushered me into the street a free man, it took me rather less than four hours to reach the nearest seaport and commence a search that covered the best part of six months. It is no easy matter to find the counterpart of a dream ship, but in the end I found her patiently awaiting me in a backwater of glorious Devon:—a Norwegian-built auxiliary cutter of twenty-three tons register, designed as a lifeboat for the North Sea fishing fleet, forty-seven feet over all, fifteen feet beam, eight feet draught, built to stand up to anything, and be handled by a crew of three or less. Such was my dream ship in cold print. In reality, and seen through her owner's eyes, she was, naturally, the most wonderful thing that ever happened. A mother on the subject of her child is almost derogatory compared with an owner concerning his ship, so the reader shall be spared further details. Having found her, there was the little matter of paying for her. I had no money. I have never had any money, but that is a detail that should never be allowed to stand in the way of a really desirable dream. It was necessary to make some. How? By conducting a stubborn offensive on the Army Authorities for my war gratuity. By sitting up to all hours in a moth-eaten dressing-gown and a microscopic flat writing short stories. By assiduously cultivating
