To write! This thought was fire in him.

So he entered his old room at Bernard Higginbotham’s and set to work. He did not tell Ruth that he was back. He did not know how long an article he would write, but he counted the words in a article in the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER. His writing lasted for three days. Also, he learned that first-class papers paid a minimum of ten dollars a column. So one hundred dollars! and he decided that that was better than seafaring.

He mailed the manuscript in a big envelope, and addressed it to the editor of the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER. He had an idea that everything sent to a newspaper was published immediately. Then he decided to write an adventure story for boys and sell it to THE YOUTH’S COMPANION.

He wanted to write about the things he knew. It was easy work, he decided on Saturday evening. He had completed on that day the first instalment of three thousand words.

After breakfast he went on with his story. He often read or re-read a chapter. This was his programme for a week. Each day he did three thousand words, and each evening he studies stories, articles, and poems that editors saw fit to publish. One thing was certain: What these writers did he could do, and only give him time and he would do what they could not do. He was glad to read in BOOK NEWS that Rudyard Kipling received a dollar per word, and that the minimum rate paid by first-class magazines was two cents a word. THE YOUTH’S COMPANION was certainly first class, and at that rate the three thousand words he had written that day would bring him sixty dollars – two months’ wages on the sea!