Chapter IX: Part 9

All hopes of a rapid passage have now been abandoned, for we have been ten weeks at sea to-day and are not yet around Cape Horn. It will be recalled that we were in the longitude of the Cape a few days ago, but heaven only knows when we can make up what we have lost since then. Our distance east of the Horn now is not more than seventy-five miles, and it does seem remarkable that we cannot make those few miles of westing; and we see now why all the sailing directions say, “Whatever you do, _make westing! make westing!_” Even though the wind is at southwest, as we have had it almost constantly, one would think that by standing well to the southward a ship could get a lay up past the Cape; but what with a two-knot easterly current, two points of leeway, and 22° of easterly variation, not to mention her being seven points off the wind under such short canvas, it is actually impossible. A yacht might do it, for she could go to windward under a storm-try-sail to an appreciable extent; but if a square-rigger holds her own and makes no easting on the _port_ tack with the wind blowing hard from the southwest off Cape Horn, she is doing very well.

At five this morning the wind backed to south and hope glowed warm in the hearts of the men; but it didn’t take it long to shift back again to its old quarter, between southwest and west-southwest, and the old man now makes no bones about our being real _bona fide_ Jonahs. It is growing colder, too, the noon temperature being 31°, though no lower at night, but the wind is as cutting and clammy and dank as the breath of an iceberg. Some ship-masters, on account of the prolonged head gales and seas of Cape Horn, prefer the Good Hope voyage when bound from North Atlantic ports to California or British Columbia; but while the winds are fair in the Southern Ocean on this course, the distance is so much greater that it is doubtful whether or not there is any advantage in it. The latest example is the case of the British ship “Wasdale,” which reached San Francisco not very long ago, one hundred and sixty-five days from London _via_ Good Hope, having sailed the enormous distance of twenty-four thousand five hundred and twenty-six miles; the Horn voyage averages three weeks less in time than the above and six thousand miles less in distance. The “Wasdale” must be a smart ship to cover nearly twenty-five thousand miles in that time.

It seems very odd that we have as yet met no homeward-bounders, as we have been several times right in their track; the skipper says, however, that there are doubtless a dozen vessels within a radius of fifty miles, all bound to the westward. Latitude, 57° 25′ south; longitude, 60° 5′ west.

+July 21+

“Land close aboard on the lee-quarter, sir,” was the startling information that the mate called down the companion-way about daylight, as we sat down to breakfast this morning. It didn’t take the captain more than three or four seconds to reach the deck, and we heard him cry savagely, “All hands wear ship; lively now, lively.” And none too soon, for there on the lee beam lay Hermite Island only three or four miles away. This is one of a cluster known as the Hermite Islands, being seven in number altogether; they form the culminating group of the Tierra del Fuegian archipelago, of which Cape Horn is the southernmost. We must have made more westing than the captain had estimated, for he had just remarked that we ought to see the Horn again at nine o’clock. Of course we wore as quickly as the stiffened arms of the men would permit, and for quite a long while, in a dismal rain, we ran down parallel with these dreary shores, on which we would have struck had daylight been a couple of hours later. If our position of yesterday wasn’t a false one, we did phenomenally well during the past twenty-four hours, for the land that we first saw this morning, and which the skipper recognized at once, is eighty miles west of yesterday’s position. But, good gracious! we were at noon to-day within eight miles of where we were last Friday in the heavy gale! The latitude was exactly the same and we were eight miles farther west. Eight miles in five days. How does that sound? And every day of it fight, fight, fight against head-winds varying from a moderate to a whole gale. In truth, the famous Cape weather is being administered in heroic doses. Personally, I don’t mind it in the least; weeks or even months of it, if necessary, would be quite immaterial to me; but the interior of the cabin is so abominably uncomfortable for my wife, bar our own room, that for this reason I want to get out of it as quickly as possible. This gloomy weather, too, is dreadfully trying for her, as it is too dark to read below without a lamp at even the brightest part of the day.

At ten we opened out Cape Spencer, a magnificent headland at the southern end of Hermite Island, and an hour later sighted Horn Island for the second time, bearing northeast true, distant eighteen miles. It was the first really good look we had had at the Horn, and the world-famous rock presented quite a formidable appearance, being five hundred feet in height, though lacking the majestic dignity of Cape Spencer, which lies twenty-five miles west-northwest of it. Indeed, there is no particular landmark about it to cause Horn Island to stand forth from the surrounding crags. Many people imagine that the Cape was so called from its resemblance to a horn, but this is a mistake. The proper name is Cape Hoorn, which was given it in 1616 by the Dutch navigator Schouten, in honor of his native town in Flanders. On the other hand, False Cape Horn, about fifty miles northwest of the true cape, at the extremity of Hardy Peninsula, bears a remarkable likeness to an inverted curved cornucopia, and also a resemblance to the fantastic Cape Split in the Bay of Fundy, at the entrance to the Minas Basin. It was our cherished desire to photograph Horn Island, but we were prevented by the disadvantageous conditions; so far as known, it has been photographed but once, and that by Captain Rivers of the American ship “A. G. Ropes,” who, a short time since, when bound to the westward, sailed boldly in to within a few miles and, during a bright spell of weather, was enabled to obtain a photograph of the great Cape.

This is the second time that we have been west of the Horn, if only a few miles, and here we go back again to the eastward on the starboard tack, with the wind a strong breeze from southwest by south. We are steering about south-southeast and the variation makes it south, which would be passable were it not for the leeway and current, so that, in spite of the variation, south-southeast is our actual course. Good-by for a few days, friend Horn; perhaps we’ll pay you another visit in a week or so. Indeed, the most satisfactory manner of ascertaining one’s exact position down here after a week or two of gales and dark weather is to set out and look for Cape Horn, which will no doubt be found in two or three days, take a fresh departure from it, and then away south again. This is actually what we have been doing, only we missed the Cape this last time, but found an equally satisfactory landmark in Spencer; if a ship-master can calculate his longitude to within a degree (about thirty-five miles) in the midst of all these currents, he is a shrewd navigator. By the way, what appropriate names have been given to various portions of wild and comfortless Tierra del Fuego; on the chart now before me appear such appellations peculiarly distinctive of this region: Last Hope Inlet, Desolation Island, Dislocation Harbor, Obstruction Sound, Famine Reach, Deceit Rocks.

Rain, rain; snow, snow; hail, hail. No end of it in sight. The aneroid has risen to 30 inches, which, with an increase of nine degrees in the temperature, would indicate a northerly wind; but we have long since given up hoping for such good luck. At 1.30 this afternoon we saw the pale sun at an altitude of about seven degrees for a moment, but he quickly drew over his face the cowl of nimbus cloud, as though terrified at the sight of Cape Horn. However, like the Ancient Mariner, “we hailed it in God’s name,” and were comforted at knowing that the orb is still in existence.

Captain Scruggs and the mate often now have very turbulent and passionate arguments, not to say quarrels, at meals. It is apparently impossible for the mate to get his reckoning right or anywhere near right, and to-day when the dinner-bell had clanged through the cabin, the skipper asked him suddenly and angrily what his longitude was. Mr. Goggins, after emptying his grimy vest-pockets of bits of tobacco, twine, and infinitesimal pencils, quakingly produced a morsel of ragged, dirty brown paper, upon which appeared a variety of rare and hitherto unknown characters, which he twisted and turned at inconceivable angles, with horrible facial contortions. There was a dead, portentous silence, “Well, sir?” rapped out the skipper “I--I--I, er--er, about 71° 22′, sir.”

“About 71° 22′, eh? That’s your idea of the ship’s position, is it? Just let me tell you that this has gone far enough. Do you understand? How in the devil’s name can you make it 71° with Cape Spencer right under your nose? Don’t you know enough yet to take a new departure from a landmark? I did think you had enough sense for that, but I see I was wrong,” etc., etc.

They argue, too, about the most trivial affairs, during which the skipper all but blows the skylights off with his hurricane voice. Later on, at dinner to-day, they quarrelled about the position of a certain San Francisco restaurant. The old man swore that it wasn’t on Polk Street. Then they went at each other quite savagely, but gradually calmed down, and we thought it was all over, when suddenly the skipper hammered on the table with his fist, and shouted, “That restaurant’s no more on Polk Street than this huckleberry pie’s a blueberry; I mean raspberry.” And he was so vexed at his simple little mistake that he thundered at the boy Sammie, who stands shuddering in the pantry during meals, “You, Sam, get some buckets of salt-water and wrench out that bath-tub; and if you’re longer than ten minutes, damme if I don’t break you all to +PIECES+.” Sammie has a woful time of it on board; for, besides doing all conceivable sorts of dirty work, he is the butt of the ship’s company, teased beyond endurance by the men, and kicked and pounded mercilessly by both mates. Probably his most disagreeable and anxious moments are passed in the pantry while we are at meals. His dread of the old man is so intense that in his awful presence he is little better than a lunatic. While he is in the pantry he dwells in terror of a summons to the table; and when “You, Sam!” finally does come crashing forth, and he reaches the captain’s side in a single bound, it irritates this singular man excessively. Then, of course, the mate must needs rake up some fancied grievance against the unhappy lad, who is immensely relieved when he is ordered in disgrace from the dining-room. The other day the skipper told him, in my wife’s presence, that he was not fit to carry guts to a bear. It seemed to us that that was exactly what he was doing, especially as he had a dish of tongues and sounds in his hand at the moment, which to me is the most objectionable of all sea-food; it’s worse than burgoo and ham-fat. Latitude, 56° 12′ south; longitude, 67° 32′ west.

+July 22+

Wore round at eight this morning, and stood north and west once more on the port tack, as the wind backed into the southward and allowed us to come up to west-northwest by compass, or northwest by west true, which is not bad. We made so little to the good, though, in the twenty-four hours that it cannot be said that we are doing anything more than waltzing up and down the sixty-seventh meridian. We have gone through the water fast enough, but not in the right direction; for forty-eight hours now we have been under single-reefed topsails, and if a ship can carry that canvas she will do five or six knots an hour even in a heavy sea. A single reef in the topsails means generally whole main-sail and foresail, which is enough to send a vessel ahead at a good rate. When the main-sail is reefed or hauled up, though, a ship goes to leeward nearly as fast as she goes ahead.

We sped over the water then at quite a respectable gait, and, in trying to make a little westing, if the skipper is driving the ship for all she’s worth, for both wind and sea are heavy, no man can blame him. The men continue to grow worse and worse, and there are not six in the forecastle who do not show the effects of exposure, chilblains and sea-boils. The latter have increased shockingly; three more men are down with them, Coleman, Pettersen, and Eckers. Coleman this morning showed me two dreadful-looking wrists; the left one was particularly bad, with a deep rent or cavity in the flesh itself that a silver dollar would not cover; not bleeding, but mortifying and sloughing terribly, presenting a sickening spectacle. Coleman says that some of the others are a good deal worse than he is. Hapless creatures! how they manage to do any work at all with these wounds is difficult to understand. Let them be bandaged ever so tightly and what will it avail in the rough work? The bandages soon work loose, and there is the bare, raw flesh exposed to the salt-water and the rubbing of their sleeves. If Job had sea-boils, it would be safe betting that they were the worst afflictions that he had. Why will not sailors take care of themselves ashore and obviate to a certain extent such suffering as they undergo off Cape Horn? The youngest and healthiest of our men, those with clear skins, do not seem to suffer much with these boils; and they say that another safeguard to a certain degree against them is to dry the wrists as much as possible before turning in. Bad food, though, with a preponderance of salt meat, will soon play havoc with the blood of the stoutest man; and while there seems to be a fairly good variety of food on the “Higgins” for the crew, yet the majority of sailors on Yankee ships are fed chiefly on wretched, scurvy-breeding food. The name that American ships used to bear thirty and forty years ago for the superlatively good rations that the men got, is by no means deserved at the present day by the majority of our own deep-water ships. Many are the tales of starvation told by men arriving on Yankee ships at San Francisco in these days; I mention San Francisco particularly, as that port has until very lately sustained the reputation of withholding justice from sailors to a remarkable extent. As to the stories of foremast hands lying on the witness-stands in court when defending themselves, I am convinced it is generally not so. We have seen several acts committed by the mates aboard this vessel against the sailors which would be regarded as entirely untrue by a justice if told by a seaman. In the great majority of cases the word of a bucko mate is taken in court in preference to the sailor’s, and in this way there is an inconceivable amount of injustice done to the latter. For instance, there are here at least a dozen men in the forecastle the word of any one of whom I would unhesitatingly believe rather than that of either of the mates. Captain Scruggs appears to be, and I believe he is, an entirely truthful man; but as for Goggins, he would lie for a worn-out chew of tobacco (he often tells monstrous falsehoods to the skipper concerning the men); and even Mr. Rarx must come under the same ban.

It seems to me that this ship makes a great deal of water. Twice in every watch, night and day, since we have been south of 50°, the ship has had to be pumped out; and in twelve hours yesterday, when the wretched pumps broke down again, we made twenty-eight inches of water. It is all very fine to say that wooden ships are lighter in bad weather than iron ones, and to allude to the latter as diving-bells, but this ship is wetter than the iron “Mandalore” was running before a heavy sea, and the latter possessed the inestimable advantage of never leaking even when driven into a high head-sea.

Captain Scruggs was in a state of mind when, after wearing round on the port tack this morning, he found that we couldn’t head up much better than north true. Of course, we had the customary eruption during the manœuvre, and he raged quite furiously at the helmsmen, who, unfortunately, were the two dullest men in the ship--Pettersen and Eckers. As I say, the captain wrought himself into wild gusts of passion, and when he found the ship off to north-northwest he had apparently exhausted all methods for easing his mind. But we reckoned without our skipper, being a man of much resource, and he conceived a brilliant plan. After standing motionless and speechless for a full minute he strode to the weather wheel-house door, tore it open, and crash! slammed it to. Again, another bang, worse than the first. Once more a great crashing rent the air that shook the structure, while the old man ground his teeth and worked his brush-like eyebrows as though they were on a string, as he stamped over to leeward, muttering to himself and shaking all over. It was a mirth-compelling scene.

A little anecdote will show him in yet another phase: we asked him, a day or two ago, who was the best helmsman in the ship, and he replied, waspishly, “There hain’t no best among ’em; they’re all d---- bad; fed like kings, and this is what you get.” Latitude, 57° 30′ south; longitude, 67° west.

+July 23+

At eleven o’clock last night we heard the rasping voice of old Goggins sing out, “Land ahead!” The captain turned out at once (he goes to bed now at seven, and sleeps till midnight if the weather isn’t too outrageous), and immediately ordered the ship on the other tack; and, after we had come around, three pinnacles of rock were seen standing sharply up out of the sea, for the night wasn’t a very dark one. They were the Diego Ramirez Rocks, which, lying eighteen marine leagues southwest of Cape Horn, form unquestionably the most dangerous obstruction in the entire Southern Ocean, rearing their jagged peaks vertically out of a depth of two hundred fathoms, right in the track of westward-bound ships. If the weather is thick and dark, there is nothing to apprise the mariner of their proximity, even if he keeps the lead going, until the thunder of what is perhaps the most tremendous surf in the world warns him, too late, that he is within hailing distance of the dreaded Diego Ramirez. A crash, a great shout, and lo! a stately ship and her company are effaced in a moment of time, a few bits of timber cast upon the shore by those vast surges of the South Pacific being all that remains of what was one of man’s most beautiful works, a full-rigged ship.

The last vessel to go ashore on these rocks was the American ship “Arabia”; and, although she went to pieces immediately, all of her crew miraculously escaped and were taken off by another vessel and landed at Montevideo. Ship-masters call the rocks ‘Dyeego Rammerreez’, though they inconsistently pronounce San Diego as it ought to be,--Deeaigo. Why is it, I wonder, that this land is always spoken of as being eighteen marine leagues from Cape Horn? Why not say fifty-four miles. Yet all ocean directories say that they are eighteen marine leagues from the Horn, though all other distances are given in miles.

We would really have passed several miles to leeward of the rocks if we had kept on, but no ship-master will ever take any chances with them; however, we are much elated at finding ourselves an appreciable distance to the westward of the Cape. Throughout the day we have been fanning along under a main-royal! But that’s the way of this region. Yesterday morning under reefed topsails; this morning courtesying quietly along over an almost smooth sea, bar the southwesterly swell.

A few minutes ago, at about two o’clock, we witnessed another exhibition of what is called “discipline” on American ships, but what is elsewhere known as brutality. These are the facts: After dinner a man was sent down into the lazarette to bring up a barrel of split pease; it was the luckless Swede, Brün. This man, who is not particularly strong at best, and is now in very bad shape, found great difficulty in shoving the barrel, which seemed to weigh about one hundred and fifty pounds, up the lazarette hatch-way; and care must then be exercised never to allow the chimes of a barrel to touch the deck, as it would leave a scar. Brün finally got the barrel clear of the hatch and was rolling it flat along the poop, when the mate, looking as sour as lime-juice, came hobbling along the alley-way and, pointing to some old marks in the deck, said, “What d’you do that for?” Now, I am perfectly sure that Brün had not made those marks, and so was the mate; but Goggins was in one of his snarling moods, and without further ado he applied his boot to Brün’s person with such severity that he fell sprawling over the barrel, which then rolled over to leeward and struck the rail with a loud crack. Without a word, or even a look, the man gathered himself up, and, grasping the barrel, continued on his way, only remarking, “I’m doing the best I can, sair,” in the weak, precise tones of a foreigner speaking English. “What! answerin’ back?” yelled Goggins. “Who learned yer that, eh?” and running up to Brün, he seized him fiercely by the throat with his left hand and then drove his right fist with full force into the man’s face. The latter staggered and fell backward half over the rail into the lanyards of the mizzen-shrouds, where he remained some moments before he came to; and then, well knowing that he would have been pounded almost to death with any handy weapon if he so much as opened his mouth again, he once more started forward with the barrel. This is a nice state of affairs when men in the merchant service of the United States are suffered to be beaten and kicked into insensibility, and in some cases actually killed at the hands of brutal, savage mates. Before we sailed in this ship I had often heard that sailors under the stars and stripes underwent the most cruel punishments, in many cases of so unusual and low a description as to preclude mention in these pages, but I hardly believed it. Now, however, after knowing how Yankee ships are run and that such brutes as Goggins sail as mates in them, it is my opinion, and that of my wife also, who understands sailors, that the published accounts of seamen’s cruelties and sufferings at the hands of the officers of our sailing ships are, in nearly every instance, true and straightforward descriptions of what took place at sea. And what is the usual result? The justice dismisses the case with the remark, “Justifiable discipline.” This is the way that the marine law is generally administered in our lower courts. There appears to be but little attempt at justice for the sailor, though I think that their chances of obtaining their rights in the future are considerably brighter than they used to be. Does any one of the other three great maritime nations--Great Britain, France, and Germany--permit such acts in their merchantmen as the beating of sailors? Decidedly not. In those countries’ ships sailors are treated as such and not as anthropophagical savages. Yet our marine laws are practically the same as theirs. Their laws are enforced, ours are not, by reason of petty briberies and deceits. It is a different story on our steamers, where the officers would not dare to maltreat the men. Discipline, far better than we have here, can be maintained without recourse to violence, which is proved by the vessels of other nations. Contrary to the statements of captains and mates, who make them to shield their bad deeds, foremast hands are _not_ continually trying to create a disturbance. I will leave this question to be answered by two American ship-masters, who run their vessels as deep-water ships ought to be, and who never have any trouble with their crews. These two men, I do not say that there are no others (though there are lementably few of them), are Captain Gates of the “S. P. Hitchcock,” and Captain Banfield of the “St. James”; these skippers believe in decent treatment and they see that their men get it. Among twenty or thirty men there are sure to be two or three hard cases; these should be dealt with according to their deserts; yet on this ship the black legs have, in every instance that we have seen, escaped punishment, while such inoffensive and well-meaning men as Brün, Karl, and others, have been made the mark for the violent tempers of both mates. The reason for brutality on Yankee ships is traceable in every instance to one man, the captain; for, if he did not countenance it, such acts could not be committed. It is passing strange that American captains, who have almost invariably risen from before the mast, should have so little sympathy for sailors, in view of the fact that only a few years ago they suffered from the tempers of mates just as now the men do who are under them. Latitude, 57° 22′ south; longitude, 68° 55′ west.

+July 24+

Our light winds didn’t last long, for the cross-jack had to be hauled up, the three top-gallant-sails furled, and the main-sail reefed during last night. We made excellent headway, though, doing five miles more than three degrees of longitude, though we were driven off to the southward too much, being at noon to-day one hundred and sixty miles south of Cape Horn and well below the northern limit of drift-ice, though the temperature is not low, 39° at noon. Thus far this has been a slightly warmer winter passage than the average, though it will surprise many people to know that the thermometer rarely falls below 30° north of 60° south; the lowest that Captain Scruggs ever saw it was 28°, though a Dutch ship, of which I have forgotten the name, reported the mercury as low as 20° on one occasion some seventy-five years ago.

Fogs form a very disagreeable feature of the Southern Ocean after the meridian of the Horn is passed, and the dampness likewise generally increases. A pretty good idea of the excessive moisture in this part of the world may be obtained by reading the report of the surveying steamer “Sylvia,” which was stationed in the Magellan Straits for fourteen months. Throughout that period rain fell on an average for eleven hours out of every twenty-four, the amount per day being half an inch.

As for fogs, we have been in one for twenty-four hours now, and a lookout is stationed on the forecastle-head by day as well as by night. Indeed, it is probable that the hardest and most tedious part of the passage still remains; usually it is not very difficult to reach the seventieth meridian, the heaviest westerly gales generally being experienced between that point and 50° south, which vessels aim to cross in 90° west. We should very much like to see the wind come out of the southwest again, by which it will be perceived how hard we are to please, for the first ten days off Cape Horn we had nothing but southwesterly gales, and we rebuked them and would be satisfied with naught but northerly breezes; now a southerly blow would be most welcome.

This morning at eleven the skipper shouted down the companion-way that there was a vessel on our weather beam, steering east, and that she would pass close aboard. So we went on deck at once, and there, looming high out of the fog, under a heavy press of sail, was a large, three-masted bark. She was the first homeward-bounder that we had seen, was probably from Australian or New Zealand ports, and she presented a noble appearance as she swept rapidly by, distant not more than a third of a mile. She was an old-style vessel, although built of iron, with no sheer and a phenomenally long jib-boom, the practice in these days being to rig sailing vessels of both iron and wood with short, thick, pole bowsprits. We thought she was going to ask us for her position, for she was two degrees south of the homeward-bound track; so we chalked “59°” and “72°” in large figures on a slate, ready to hold up, for she was near enough to make them out with the glasses. She flew onward, though, without a sign; and as it was none of our business what she was doing a hundred and twenty miles out of her course, we didn’t offer any suggestions. This vessel was a good illustration of the difference in carrying sail between close-hauled and running free, for we had nothing set above the topsails, while she was under all three royals.

Yesterday was a grand rest-day for the men,--that is, a cessation from being continually drenched with salt-water, and a few days of this sort would go far toward healing their sea-boils. As Paddy put it, “To-day’s worth tin dollars to any one of us, sor.” It was, in truth, an unusual sight to see the men going about without their oil-skins once more, for fully two whole weeks have passed since they could work on the main-deck without these yellow garments. Oil-skins really do not do very much good in heavy weather, though, as has been mentioned before. Nothing but a suit of diving armor would keep a man dry on deck off Cape Horn; still, oil-skins keep a great deal of water out, and also protect a man against the cold. So much bad weather lately has deprived me of my customary exercise at the pumps, for it is dangerous to go knocking about the decks in a heavy sea; but yesterday I had nearly an hour of hard work, doing forty strokes to the minute. Both watches pumped together, as a rope was passed over one of the handles; two thousand strokes at a ship’s pumps is exceedingly lusty exercise if a man doesn’t shirk his work, and, I should think, would satisfy Sandow himself.

As far as the atmosphere here is concerned, to-day is typical Southern Ocean weather: drizzly, foggy, clammy, and dismal to an incredible degree. There is hardly any light at all below at noon, and everything is dim and obscure, in spite of the fact that the sun commenced his southern journey more than a month ago. The cabin bill of fare, however, has not shown the least symptoms of debility; on the contrary, when we got down past the Falklands the diversity and excellence of the edibles seemed to increase. The immense variety of tinned goods put up in these days is astonishing; for to the old list, which comprised meats, pease, and beans, are added such things as spinach, cabbage, and pumpkin for pies, all of which seem to be nearly, if not quite, as good as fresh vegetables. The only article of food on board that is really bad is the pie-crust; there are not adjectives enough in any language to describe this atrocious stuff. So surprisingly good is the eating now that I have copied down what we had at each meal for one week, in the very worst weather. Here it is, with the hope that the reader will not be bored in the perusal thereof.

+Sunday+

_Breakfast._--Salt mackerel, smoked sausage, boiled hominy, and potatoes.

_Dinner._--Pea soup, pressed corned beef, boiled potatoes, spinach, tapioca pudding, _demi-tasse_!

_Supper._--Pressed corned beef, fried potatoes, jam, and cheese.

+Monday+

_Breakfast._--Oatmeal, ham and eggs, corn bread.

_Dinner._--Vermicelli soup, beef stew, boned turkey, asparagus, boiled potatoes, deep apple pie.

_Supper._--Boned turkey, corned-beef hash, baked potatoes, canned strawberries, “Hamburg process.”

+Tuesday+

_Breakfast._--Fried tripe, scrambled eggs (questionable), griddle-cakes.

_Dinner._--Vegetable soup, Hamburg steak of fresh pork, Boston baked beans, pumpkin pie.

_Supper._--Mutton stew, baked beans, stewed corn, marmalade.

+Wednesday+

_Breakfast._--Oatmeal, salt herring, bacon, potatoes, rolls.

_Dinner._--Oyster soup, prawn curry and rice, boned turkey and string-beans, blackberry pie.

_Supper._--Salt beef stew, baked potatoes, stewed apples, canned pears.

+Thursday+

_Breakfast._--Hominy, bacon and eggs, muffins.

_Dinner._--Beef broth, roast fresh pork, asparagus, tinned plum pudding.

_Supper._--Boned chicken, corned-beef hash, rolls, fig preserves.

+Friday+

_Breakfast._--Smoked salmon, omelette (questionable), rice pan-cakes.

_Dinner._--Clam chowder, picked-up codfish, meat pie, pease, huckleberry pie.

_Supper._--Fish-balls, cold tongue, marmalade.

+Saturday+

_Breakfast._--Lobster curry and rice, bacon rolls.

_Dinner._--Vegetable soup, roast fresh pork, Boston beans, macaroni, quince pie.

_Supper._--Cold pork, baked potatoes, baked beans, stewed prunes.

To this excellent bill of fare I must add that every single item is of the very best, and when it is mentioned that the ship was stored by Morris & Co., who include the White Star Line among their patrons, further comment is hardly necessary. All the pickles and preserves are in glass jars and put up by Crosse & Blackwell, Worcestershire sauce by Lea & Perrin, while olives, Edam cheese, and several varieties of biscuits are always on the table. With such eating, we can exclaim with Nansen, “Are we to be pitied when such cheer for the inner man is provided?” Coffee that is actually delicious washes down all these good things. Would that sailors fared as well in proportion.

But oh, the surroundings! The captain in his table manners really isn’t so very much out of the way, but the mate and the table-cloth are utterly beyond language. The crust of dirt upon every visible portion of old Goggins’s anatomy is rapidly increasing, and mire of various sorts is crystallized in the folds of his corrugated skin. It is true that the second mate of the “Mandalore” was no better, but then he didn’t eat with us, while this creature does, instead of with his pachydermatous relatives in the sty.

The table-cloth is a marvellous piece of work at the end of the third day, with islands of gravy, continents of soup, lakes of coffee, and dollops of all kinds of grease, so that it looks like a sort of hideous crazy quilt. All this could be avoided by using a piece of white oil-cloth instead of the soiled cotton cloth, and it could be wiped clean after each meal. But no deep-water skipper who ever lived could be induced to abandon his table-cloth, which he cherishes with an extravagant affection. To him it is one of the boundaries between the cabin and the forecastle, and anything reminding him of those evil days when he himself lived in that odious den is too monstrous for thought. Latitude, 58° 40′ south; longitude, 72° west.

+July 25+

And still to the southward we go. A little more of this will be more than sufficient; but the northwesterly winds continue, and we cannot choose but steer whither they will permit us. Already we are nearly four degrees south of the Horn, and we will no doubt cross the sixtieth parallel in a short time. Many captains prefer going even as far as 64° south, and make their westing down there where the degrees of longitude are less than thirty miles, and then steer north on a meridian, if they can. _If they can._ Ah! that’s the point; for often, after penetrating far into the high latitudes, they cannot get north again when they want to, and these vessels then make very long passages. For instance, about three years ago several ships were in sight of each other, all bound to the westward. Some of them, including the “Reuce,” a Yankee ship, of which Mr. Rarx was then second mate, knocked about near the land, waiting for a slant; the others dove into the southward immediately, including the “St. Paul.” All of the latter made very long passages, the “Reuce” having discharged her cargo in San Francisco and commenced reloading before the “St. Paul” arrived. Captain Scruggs is one of those who do not advocate the southern passage, and he has no chart that reaches below 58° south, so that my track chart of the world is the only one that can be used just now. This doesn’t seem right, for ships in the Cape Horn trade ought to be provided with charts to the South Polar Circle. Suppose a ship were blown down among the South Shetlands without a chart? Such a thing is quite possible, and once in that archipelago without a knowledge of the land or any of the courses, a ship would stand mighty little chance of getting out again in bad weather.

This wind is just exactly in the wrong place; of course, we could go round on the other tack, but we couldn’t do better than north-northeast by compass, which would be an absurd course, so we have to go pegging away at it and trust to luck. We are now almost exactly south of New York, and can imagine the people eating and sleeping there at the same time that we do ourselves, though under somewhat different conditions. Steady rain has commenced again; the aneroid stands at 29, and the melancholy, doleful appearance of the heavens and the sea has apparently increased. Latitude, 59° 40′ south; longitude, 75° 20′ west.

+July 26+

At last we are steering our course, west-northwest true. A very light breeze has just now (4 +P.M.+) begun to breathe softly out of the southeast, so faint that we are not doing a mile an hour against a head-sea; but even such a progression is most welcome, being in the right direction.

We had all the wind that we wanted yesterday afternoon, though from the westward. It began to blow hard at three o’clock, and at 4.30 the upper fore- and mizzen-top-sails were clewed up; the main-topsail was double-reefed at five; the main-sail was furled at six; at seven the foresail was hauled up, and it was blowing a furious gale. So violent was the wind that all hands were more than an hour and a half making fast the foresail alone. At midnight there wasn’t a breath of wind, and we have ever since floundered about in a heavy swell from several simultaneous directions, and we presented the singular appearance of a ship becalmed under a double-reefed maintop-sail. Of such is the weather in the heart of the Southern Ocean. We have crossed the sixtieth parallel, and at noon we were two hundred and forty miles farther south than Cape Horn; and so silent and desolate is this vast ocean that, like Nansen in the “Fram,” we pursue our journey in deepest solitude, a molecule in this, the largest body of water on the globe.

There is no alteration in the dark weather, save that at one this afternoon the sun showed himself for a moment, and I tried to get an ex-meridian, but failed because of the poor horizon. It has now been almost a fortnight since we have had either a chronometer or a meridian sight, and our reckoning is probably far from true. There is always something adverse in taking sights down here; for, if the sun isn’t obscured, a bad horizon makes the correct altitude impossible; and if the sea-rim is well marked, there is sure to be a gale of wind blowing to drench the sextant with spray. Happy is the mariner who can get an accurate observation once every ten days south of Cape Horn, and ships often reach 30° south in the Pacific without a glimpse of the sun. At four yesterday afternoon the heaviness and the oppressiveness and foreboding look of the atmosphere were almost terrible; while the disk of the sun, weak and pale through the mist-squalls, glared down upon the wild scene with sickly eye. Hope has arisen within our breasts, though, with the present southeasterly airs, and perhaps it will not be long now until we are in bright sunshine again, which will dry out everything below. The stove seems powerless to reduce the humidity of the cabin, and the condition of the dining-room is absolutely outrageous.

At supper last evening we had a pleasant little diversion. An unexpectedly heavy sea had come up from the northwest, which, catching the ship on the quarter, would heave her over to leeward in tremendous rolls. The supper-bell had rung, and my wife and I had seated ourselves at the table on the weather-side, the cat perching itself between us upon the bench; the skipper and mate had not yet come in.

At that moment these were the contents of the table: four dinner-plates, four saucers, two plates of bread and biscuit, a large dish of baked potatoes, a platter of corned-beef hash, a pressed tongue, a dish of butter, a glass jar of marmalade, a basin of stewed apples, and innumerable knives, forks, and spoons. All at once there came that peculiar motion that always precedes an unusually heavy roll in a sailing ship. We grasped the long bench with the grip of death. One short roll to windward, and then began the deep, ponderous, resistless lurch to leeward. Over she went, leisurely and quietly, and still farther, till she must have been rail under. At this moment a dusky object shot by us with incredible speed; it was the steward, who vanished backward into the open store-room opposite, and we saw him not again for several minutes. The last part of him to fade out of sight was his ghastly smile disappearing through the doorway. Then various objects began to fetch away in the pantry,--tin cans, cups and saucers, gradually increasing to an _allegro furioso_; and, finally, with a frightful clash, like the climax of a full orchestra, the entire contents of the table swept grandly across to leeward, and fell like an avalanche against the opposite wall. For the moment we were stunned by the appalling crash, and then there smote upon our ears a shriek whose equal cannot be conceived. It swelled now from a low murmur to a perfectly infernal scream, like the screech of a fog siren, and anon sank down again, like the moaning wail of the Irish death-cry. It was the cat. At first we thought that it was buried under the hurricane of dishes, and looked to see it lying in slithers upon the floor. But no; his tail had been nipped in the movable back with which the benches are provided, and the harder we pushed back against it to prevent ourselves from being projected across the table the fiercer was the grip on the tail. We could not release the unhappy animal without unpleasant results, not to say injury, to ourselves, and we could but sit and hearken to its dreadful voice.

Solemnly and slowly the ship righted, and a scene of remarkable devastation confronted us. On the table two articles remained, a saucer and a shallow, empty, wooden box, used to chock things off in. Everything else had crashed against the opposite wall with such terrific energy that the plates and dishes were reduced to the minutest fragments. Before it finally found a resting-place the cylindrical roll of tongue had carromed separately on each baked potato; a large, unbroken platter slid back and forth on the floor like a toboggan upon a slick, gleaming path of apple-sauce; the butter was face down in the extreme corner of the store-room; and the elliptical wad of corned-beef hash loomed up brown and moist upon the opposite panel, where it had stuck like a wet snow-ball.

When the final clatter had calmed down like the distant mumblings of a thunder-storm, the steward protruded his scared face around the angle of the doorway, and, urged by the saw-like voice of the skipper, who had now flown into a passion, and was standing at the threshold, began to slowly gather up the fragments of our once succulent repast. We contrived to fare pretty well, though, by scraping off the tongue and opening a tin of pease and tomatoes; and we would have treated the whole affair as a joke had it not been for the old man’s temper. He was thoroughly angry, and when I observed that on the “Mandalore” we had racks four inches high instead of two, and that we broke not a dish or a cup during the passage, he almost suffocated, and after glaring at us a moment, leaning against the mizzen-mast at the head of the table, he snarled, “I druther set right down and eat offen the floor than have sech things on the table.”

Indeed, he has been in a violent mood all day at the light weather, and a growl is all that he has vouchsafed by way of an answer. After dinner he went prowling about forward looking for a row, and when he couldn’t find one, he came back and threw half a plank down the lazarette hatch at the poor, mewing, deserted alley-cat which he keeps shuts up in the gloom of that dusky cavern. Latitude, 60° 10′ south; longitude, 76° 20′ west.

+July 27+

Wind east, force 6; course, northwest, half west, true; distance run in the last sixty minutes, ten knots! Glorious work; it is the fastest that we have gone through the water in several weeks; for the last time that we flew along at this speed was off the coast of Patagonia, with a west-northwest gale over the quarter. The grand easterly wind did not reach us until the morning watch, however, so that the whole day’s run was not so great as the heading of this day’s log would indicate. Yesterday, from 4 to 8 +P.M.+, we lounged about in an almost perfect calm; and the stars came out of a clear, placid sky, and, quivering and trembling, peered down upon an ocean nearly motionless, for nothing but the ghost of the southwest swell remained. At the present moment even the last vestige of it has vanished under the influence of the east wind, and the sea is silent and undisturbed save for the ruffling caused by the fast-freshening breeze. Strange weather for 60° south, only four hundred and fifty miles from the South Polar Circle, in a locality world-famous for its seas and storms. Sometimes, as in our case, enormous seas are encountered in sight of Cape Horn itself; but usually the largest are seen to the westward of the Diego Ramirez, where the sea sinks again to great depths. This easterly wind is quite surprising to us also; for, barring one day of southeasterly winds when we first spoke the French ship, four weeks ago, we have had almost continuous westerly gales. Even for Cape Horn a month of such implacable winds is a bad record, for on an average an easterly blow should come every two or three weeks. Our joy, therefore, is very great, now that we are going so finely and heading our true course, with the wind on the quarter, and all possible sail set and drawing. Another unusual, and to our eyes an extremely beautiful, spectacle was the bright, clear sky of last night, with the shining path of the Milky Way encircling the heavens with its girdle of gold-dust; the stately form of the Crux Australis, now at the zenith; and in the south, forty-five degrees above the horizon, those two weird nebulæ, the Magellan Clouds, gazing down at us with wan, dim eyes.

Still another source of delight is the fact that for the first time in three weeks I have been able to wear foot-gear other than rubber boots. My leather ones cracked from being hung too near the stove, so that ever since we passed Cape Virgins it has either been raining so hard or the sea has been so heavy, even on the poop, that nothing but rubber would keep the feet dry; and three steady weeks of rubber boots is somewhat monotonous. And sleep! Heavens! what a grand one last night was for peaceful, deep rest, the first that we have had since we showed our nose outside of Cape St. John. Instead of the customary rolling through an arc of about forty degrees, there was nothing in the ship’s motion to indicate that we were afloat except an occasional deep breath, rather pleasant than otherwise. But I am writing as though we were in the Tropics and in fine weather for good and all; instead of which, there are hundreds, almost thousands of miles to cover before the fine, warm days begin. At this season fine weather cannot be looked for till we cross 30° south in about 100° west, a difference of latitude alone of eighteen hundred miles, not to mention longitude at all.

Would that some stranger could have heard the mate’s conversation at dinner to-day and witnessed his gesticulations. The old man commenced on the subject of the men who manned sailing ships in these days, a topic that invariably has him in a helpless rage in a few minutes. “Why,” said he, after a long speech, “I had a crew once in the ‘Priscilly Waters’ that was sailors, not farmers; one watch of those fellows would do more work in four hours than the whole of the eighteen men here in a day, and there was only ten of ’em before the mast. Why, all hands on the ‘Waters’ used to nearly yank the masts out of her.”

As in duty bound, the mate agreed with the skipper, which he did by sharp jerks and winks in the old man’s direction; and even went him one better by telling how, in ancient days on the Pacific coast, _he_ had had a crew in the “Jacob Billings,” for nineteen months on end, who used to lift the ship clean out of the water. But his manner of speech at meals in the captain’s presence! His absurd, grotesque ways! He is always much embarrassed how to begin when he has anything on his mind; and I can see him now, grinning and simpering like a fool, gazing intently out of the forward window. At last his meditations overwhelm him; and, drawing his greasy sleeve several times across his mouth from ear to ear, he begins to utter odd sounds in his throat, still staring out on the main-deck. Gradually he grows bolder, and fragments of sentences can be here and there detected; when suddenly, carried entirely away, he turns his bleary eyes full upon you and finishes in a violent shout, instantly collapsing, like an exhausted bellows.

Often, during an evening, when I go on deck for a breath of air before turning in, he will discourse thus: “I tell you, Mr. Stevens, Noo York carn’t touch San Francisco for cheap livin’. Why, sir, I can git a meal in a ’igh-toned rest’rant there for less nor a quarter of what I can East. Me and the wife was passin’ along the street in San Francisco one evenin’ (yer’d never take me for the mate of a ship, sir, if you was to meet me ashore), and she says to me, says she, ‘’Arry, I’m ’ungry,’ says she. ‘Hall right,’ I says, ‘so am I.’ So we goes into a ’igh-toned rest’rant and has a bowl er soup, a bit er fish, a pick er veal, some vegetables, a piece er pie, and a big cupper corfee. And ’ow much d’ye think it were? Ten cents apiece. ‘Pretty good,’ says I to th’ old woman; ‘we’ll try it in Noo York.’ So w’en we got East ag’in, we went into a rest’rant on Fulton Street, near the ferry, up two flights. Oh, it were ’igh-toned, too, sir. They ’ad niggers for waiters. So I picked one out and says to ’im, ‘’Ere, you, bring a bit er steak,’ I says, ‘some pertaters, and corfee.’ Well, I ’ad to leave the steak, I couldn’t eat it; and I says to the nigger, ‘Take them pertaters back; I never eats warmed-over vegetables.’ And wot d’ye think they stuck me? Fifty cents each!”