After this first day of exploration, the real joyous life of the ship comes to one. Every hour of every day is one of pleasure. You are on the only ship in the world into every corner of which a passenger is allowed to go. You are, in so far as your pleasure and freedom go, practically the owner of the ship. The crew and even the captain _may not_ know but what you _are_ one of the owners, for nothing but your name is given to the officers before you come aboard. Of course, the steward has the privilege to tell you to keep out of his kitchen, and the captain for you to keep out of the pilot-house--but they never do it. That guest, for instance, who haunts the pilot-house almost from morning to night, who insists upon taking lessons in steering, and who on any other craft in the world would soon be told to remain in his cabin or mind his business, may be a millionaire himself--a millionaire who is giving this line of ships many thousands of dollars’ worth of freight each year. So the captain and the crew _must_ be affable. But, as I have said before, this is accepted as a pleasure and not as a duty on the Inland Seas. I have taken trips on a score of vessels, and it means much when I say that never have I encountered an unpleasant captain, and that only once did I meet with a mate who was not pleasant to his passengers. So, from the first day out, the big steel ship is an “open house” to its guests. Forward and aft of the cabins, great awnings are stretched, thick rugs and carpets are spread upon the deck, and easy chairs are scattered about. The captain and his mates are ready with the answers to a thousand questions. They point out objects and locations of interest as they are passed. There, in the late storms of last autumn, a ship went down with all on board; on yonder barren coast, five or six miles away, the captain guides your glasses to the skeleton of a ship, whose tragic story he tells you; he names the lighthouses, the points of coasts, and tells you about the scores of ships you pass each day. He shows you how the wonderful mechanism of the ship is run from the pilot-house, and he gives you lessons in the points of the compass, and perhaps lets you try your hand at the wheel. And each hour, if you have been abroad, you see more and more how an ocean trip cannot be compared to this. In a preceding chapter I have described what you see and what you pass in this thousand-mile journey to Duluth; how you slip from summer to autumn, from the heart of the nation’s population to vast, silent wildernesses where the bear and the wolf roam unmolested; how great cities give place to mining and lumber camps, and you come into the great northern lake where darkness does not settle until after nine o’clock at night. [Illustration: Tugs Trying to Release Boats Held in the Ice at the Soo. Copyright 1906 by Young, Lord & Rhoades, Ltd. ]