In the Bohemian Club of San Francisco there are some crack sailors. I know, because I heard them pass judgment on the _Snark_ during the process of her building. They found only one vital thing the matter with her, and on this they were all agreed, namely, that she could not run. She was all right in every particular, they said, except that I’d never be able to run her before it in a stiff wind and sea. “Her lines,” they explained enigmatically, “it is the fault of her lines. She simply cannot be made to run, that is all.” Well, I wish I’d only had those crack sailors of the Bohemian Club on board the _Snark_ the other night for them to see for themselves their one, vital, unanimous judgment absolutely reversed. Run? It is the one thing the _Snark_ does to perfection. Run? She ran with a sea-anchor fast for’ard and a full mizzen flattened down aft. Run? At the present moment, as I write this, we are bowling along before it, at a six-knot clip, in the north-east trades. Quite a tidy bit of sea is running. There is nobody at the wheel, the wheel is not even lashed and is set over a half-spoke weather helm. To be precise, the wind is north-east; the _Snark’s_ mizzen is furled, her mainsail is over to starboard, her head-sheets are hauled flat: and the _Snark’s_ course is south-south-west. And yet there are men who have sailed the seas for forty years and who hold that no boat can run before it without being steered. They’ll call me a liar when they read this; it’s what they called Captain Slocum when he said the same of his _Spray_.
As regards the future of the _Snark_ I’m all at sea. I don’t know. If I had the money or the credit, I’d build another _Snark_ that _would_ heave to. But I am at the end of my resources. I’ve got to put up with the present _Snark_ or quit—and I can’t quit. So I guess I’ll have to try to get along with heaving the _Snark_ to stern first. I am waiting for the next gale to see how it will work. I think it can be done. It all depends on how her stern takes the seas. And who knows but that some wild morning on the China Sea, some gray-beard skipper will stare, rub his incredulous eyes and stare again, at the spectacle of a weird, small craft very much like the _Snark_, hove to stern-first and riding out the gale?