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Chapter XII
N E A R I, Y A FA I) ECU T
n may of 1919 we started in a small auxiliary schooner from Seattle to Skagway, Alaska. We really commenced sailing from Lake Union, as our decrepit three cylinder engine gave out before we reached the first drawbridge. We hoisted the canvas and sailed down the canal (contrary to all harbor laws), blowing the fog horn for the bridges and trusting to luck at the locks. We were loaded with four month's supplies and were limited for deck space, so our lifeboat equipment consisted of one twelve-foot Peter boro canoe, which in smooth water would hold one half of our crew of six.
The next morning, while still in Puget Sound, the lookout spied an empty rowboat floating doAvn with the tide. We came about and picked it up; a sixteen-foot, flat-bottomed boat built of oak and weighing about five hundred pounds. Later on that summer this gift from the sea saved our lives. When we put in at Victoria, B. C. I went ashore and purchased an old, secondhand, outboard motor and thus Ave made the Captain's Launch.
Much has been written about outboard motors and much has been said that couldn't be written. The latter variety was the kind of motor our little putt-putt turned out to be, and thereby hangs the tale.
We soon learned that our power plant would never start by just plain cranking. First it was necessary to take out the spark plug and heat it with burning waste for five minutes, then turn the motor over several times, sucking the flames into the cylinder. After four more minutes of this Ave would hastily
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