“How’s the engine running, Al?” Bob queried. “It’s all right, if the carburetor’ll only keep mixin’ like it has been th’ past few days.” “Got plenty of oil and gas?” “Yep. Both tanks full.” “All right; let’s go, gang. What say?” “Go she is.” “Ed, you better lash down everything above deck--Charlie, giv’m a hand-- Hal, take first trick at the wheel---- Ahoy, on the dock, let go our lines will you?” and shortly, with a farewell screech, we were out in the channel. A short distance down we passed a subchaser on our port side, coming in. As I took a spoke in the wheel I wished very fervently that I was on that boat, bound back to the dock. I clawed around with my free hand and drew up the tops of my boots, and reached over for my oil coat which hung on a hook. This sounds strange, I know; but there is a curious sensation of dampness that pervades one when running in a heavy sea, and be the pilot house ever so comfortable and warm, the sight of wave after wave piling up and smashing over the bow always makes one mechanically reach for boots and slicker. I was beginning to see things, though we were still in calm water, comparatively. The run down the protected channel was quickly made. We passed a score of cannery tenders, all bound for town. Most of the men on them waved at us wildly and pointed the other way. I gave them all a debonair toot of the whistle, a bit of hypocrisy that soothed my feelings considerably. The trap door connecting the pilot house with the galley opened and Bob entered, wiping his mouth on the back of his jacket. “All right, Hal, I’ll take ’er while you get a bite to eat.” “You better start collecting all the spare rope you can find, Dad,” I said to the cook as I squeezed into the diminutive galley. “Enough to lash yourself down with, too.” Dad was a spry young adventurer of some seventy-two years. He had fought nearly all the Indian tribes in the Northwest, it seems, under General Miles, when a young buck of eighteen, and somehow, now at the other end of the cycle, the lure had returned to him and he had taken to the water. This was his first sea job. “Gwine ter be rough, I reckon, heh? Well, let ’er come--_yerroo-oop_!” He let out a wild war whoop. Suddenly he made a grab for the coffeepot which rocked wildly on the stove. We were weaving in and out of the protecting islands between the straits and the channel. “Yeroop, yourself,” I said, hastily gulping down my coffee and making for the door. “You’ll be using worse language than that in a mighty short space of time.” “Heh! Git out of my kitchen!” It was growing dark when I retook the wheel. Overhead the sky was a mottled gray-black. The wind was beginning to sing through our mast and rigging. On either side were the blurred outlines of the islands we were hugging. In another few minutes they would be behind us, and we would be out in the straits bucking a wind that hit us on our port quarter.