In our first attempt to double the Cape, when we came up to the
latitude of it, we were nearly seventeen hundred miles to the
westward, but, in running for the Straits of Magellan, we stood so
far to the eastward that we made our second attempt at a distance
of not more than four or five hundred miles; and we had great
hopes, by this means, to run clear of the ice; thinking that the
easterly gales, which had prevailed for a long time, would have
driven it to the westward. With the wind about two points free,
the yards braced in a little, and two close-reefed topsails and a
reefed foresail on the ship, we made great way toward the
southward; and almost every watch, when we came on deck, the air
seemed to grow colder, and the sea to run higher. Still we saw no
ice, and had great hopes of going clear of it altogether, when,
one afternoon, about three o'clock, while we were taking a siesta
during our watch below, ``All hands!'' was called in a loud and
fearful voice. ``Tumble up here, men!-- tumble up!-- don't stop
for your clothes-- before we're upon it!'' We sprang out of our
berths and hurried upon deck. The loud, sharp voice of the captain
was heard giving orders, as though for life or death, and we ran
aft to the braces, not waiting to look ahead, for not a moment was
to be lost. The helm was hard up, the after yards shaking, and the
ship in the act of wearing. Slowly, with the stiff ropes and iced
rigging, we swung the yards round, everything coming hard and with
a creaking and rending sound, like pulling up a plank which has
been frozen into the ice. The ship wore round fairly, the yards
were steadied, and we stood off on the other tack, leaving behind
us, directly under our larboard quarter, a large ice island,
peering out of the mist, and reaching high above our tops; while
astern, and on either side of the island, large tracts of
field-ice were dimly seen, heaving and rolling in the sea. We were
now safe, and standing to the northward; but, in a few minutes
more, had it not been for the sharp lookout of the watch, we
should have been fairly upon the ice, and left our ship's old
bones adrift in the Southern Ocean. After standing to the
northward a few hours, we wore ship, and, the wind having hauled,
we stood to the southward and eastward. All night long a bright
lookout was kept from every part of the deck; and whenever ice was
seen on the one bow or the other the helm was shifted and the
yards braced, and, by quick working of the ship, she was kept
clear. The accustomed cry of ``Ice ahead!''-- ``Ice on the lee
bow!''-- ``Another island!'' in the same tones, and with the same
orders following them, seemed to bring us directly back to our old
position of the week before. During our watch on deck, which was
from twelve to four, the wind came out ahead, with a pelting storm
of hail and sleet, and we lay hove-to, under a close-reefed fore
topsail, the whole watch. During the next watch it fell calm with
a drenching rain until daybreak, when the wind came out to the
westward, and the weather cleared up, and showed us the whole
ocean, in the course which we should have steered, had it not been
for the head wind and calm, completely blocked up with ice. Here,
then, our progress was stopped, and we wore ship, and once more
stood to the northward and eastward; not for the Straits of
Magellan, but to make another attempt to double the Cape, still
farther to the eastward; for the captain was determined to get
round if perseverance could do it, and the third time, he said,
never failed.
With a fair wind we soon ran clear of the field-ice, and by noon
had only the stray islands floating far and near upon the ocean.
The sun was out bright, the sea of a deep blue, fringed with the
white foam of the waves, which ran high before a strong
southwester; our solitary ship tore on through the open water as
though glad to be out of her confinement; and the ice islands lay
scattered here and there, of various sizes and shapes, reflecting
the bright rays of the sun, and drifting slowly northward before
the gale. It was a contrast to much that we had lately seen, and a
spectacle not only of beauty, but of life; for it required but
little fancy to imagine these islands to be animate masses which
had broken loose from the ``thrilling regions of thick-ribbed
ice,'' and were working their way, by wind and current, some
alone, and some in fleets, to milder climes. No pencil has ever
yet given anything like the true effect of an iceberg. In a
picture, they are huge, uncouth masses, stuck in the sea, while
their chief beauty and grandeur-- their slow, stately motion, the
whirling of the snow about their summits, and the fearful groaning
and cracking of their parts-- the picture cannot give. This is the
large iceberg,-- while the small and distant islands, floating on
the smooth sea, in the light of a clear day, look like little
floating fairy isles of sapphire.
From a northeast course we gradually hauled to the eastward, and
after sailing about two hundred miles, which brought us as near to
the western coast of Terra del Fuego as was safe, and having lost
sight of the ice altogether,-- for the third time we put the
ship's head to the southward, to try the passage of the Cape. The
weather continued clear and cold, with a strong gale from the
westward, and we were fast getting up with the latitude of the
Cape, with a prospect of soon being round. One fine afternoon, a
man who had gone into the fore-top to shift the rolling tackles
sung out at the top of his voice, and with evident glee, ``Sail
ho!'' Neither land nor sail had we seen since leaving San Diego;
and only those who have traversed the length of a whole ocean
alone can imagine what an excitement such an announcement produced
on board. ``Sail ho!'' shouted the cook, jumping out of his
galley; ``Sail ho!'' shouted a man, throwing back the slide of the
scuttle, to the watch below, who were soon out of their berths and
on deck; and ``Sail ho!'' shouted the captain down the
companion-way to the passenger in the cabin. Beside the pleasure
of seeing a ship and human beings in so desolate a place, it was
important for us to speak a vessel, to learn whether there was ice
to the eastward, and to ascertain the longitude; for we had no
chronometer, and had been drifting about so long that we had
nearly lost our reckoning; and opportunities for lunar
observations are not frequent or sure in such a place as Cape
Horn. For these various reasons the excitement in our little
community was running high, and conjectures were made, and
everything thought of for which the captain would hail, when the
man aloft sung out-- ``Another sail, large on the weather bow!''
This was a little odd, but so much the better, and did not shake
our faith in their being sails. At length the man in the top
hailed, and said he believed it was land, after all. ``Land in
your eye!'' said the mate, who was looking through the telescope;
``they are ice islands, if I can see a hole through a ladder'';
and a few moments showed the mate to be right; and all our
expectations fled; and instead of what we most wished to see we
had what we most dreaded, and what we hoped we had seen the last
of. We soon, however, left these astern, having passed within
about two miles of them, and at sundown the horizon was clear in
all directions.
Having a fine wind, we were soon up with and passed the latitude
of the Cape, and, having stood far enough to the southward to give
it a wide berth, we began to stand to the eastward, with a good
prospect of being round and steering to the northward, on the
other side, in a very few days. But ill luck seemed to have
lighted upon us. Not four hours had we been standing on in this
course before it fell dead calm, and in half an hour it clouded
up, a few straggling blasts, with spits of snow and sleet, came
from the eastward, and in an hour more we lay hove-to under a
close-reefed main topsail, drifting bodily off to leeward before
the fiercest storm that we had yet felt, blowing dead ahead, from
the eastward. It seemed as though the genius of the place had been
roused at finding that we had nearly slipped through his fingers,
and had come down upon us with tenfold fury. The sailors said that
every blast, as it shook the shrouds, and whistled through the
rigging, said to the old ship, ``No, you don't!''-- ``No, you
don't!''
For eight days we lay drifting about in this manner. Sometimes--
generally towards noon-- it fell calm; once or twice a round
copper ball showed itself for a few moments in the place where the
sun ought to have been, and a puff or two came from the westward,
giving some hope that a fair wind had come at last. During the
first two days we made sail for these puffs, shaking the reefs out
of the topsails and boarding the tacks of the courses; but finding
that it only made work for us when the gale set in again, it was
soon given up, and we lay-to under our close-reefs. We had less
snow and hail than when we were farther to the westward, but we
had an abundance of what is worse to a sailor in cold weather,--
drenching rain. Snow is blinding, and very bad when coming upon a
coast, but, for genuine discomfort, give me rain with freezing
weather. A snowstorm is exciting, and it does not wet through the
clothes (a fact important to a sailor); but a constant rain there
is no escaping from. It wets to the skin, and makes all protection
vain. We had long ago run through all our dry clothes, and as
sailors have no other way of drying them than by the sun, we had
nothing to do but to put on those which were the least wet. At the
end of each watch, when we came below, we took off our clothes and
wrung them out; two taking hold of a pair of trousers, one at each
end,-- and jackets in the same way. Stockings, mittens, and all,
were wrung out also, and then hung up to drain and chafe dry
against the bulkheads. Then, feeling of all our clothes, we picked
out those which were the least wet, and put them on, so as to be
ready for a call, and turned-in, covered ourselves up with
blankets, and slept until three knocks on the scuttle and the
dismal sound of ``All Starbowlines ahoy! Eight bells, there below!
Do you hear the news?'' drawled out from on deck, and the sulky
answer of ``Aye, aye!'' from below, sent us up again.
On deck all was dark, and either a dead calm, with the rain
pouring steadily down, or, more generally, a violent gale dead
ahead, with rain pelting horizontally, and occasional variations
of hail and sleet; decks afloat with water swashing from side to
side, and constantly wet feet, for boots could not be wrung out
like drawers, and no composition could stand the constant soaking.
In fact, wet and cold feet are inevitable in such weather, and are
not the least of those items which go to make up the grand total
of the discomforts of a winter passage round Cape Horn. Few words
were spoken between the watches as they shifted; the wheel was
relieved, the mate took his place on the quarter-deck, the
lookouts in the bows; and each man had his narrow space to walk
fore and aft in, or rather to swing himself forward and back in,
from one belaying-pin to another, for the decks were too slippery
with ice and water to allow of much walking. To make a walk, which
is absolutely necessary to pass away the time, one of us hit upon
the expedient of sanding the decks; and afterwards, whenever the
rain was not so violent as to wash it off, the weather-side of the
quarter-deck, and a part of the waist and forecastle were
sprinkled with the sand which we had on board for holystoning, and
thus we made a good promenade, where we walked fore and aft, two
and two, hour after hour, in our long, dull, and comfortless
watches. The bells seemed to be an hour or two apart, instead of
half an hour, and an age to elapse before the welcome sound of
eight bells. The sole object was to make the time pass on. Any
change was sought for which would break the monotony of the time;
and even the two hours' trick at the wheel, which came round to us
in turn, once in every other watch, was looked upon as a relief.
The never-failing resource of long yarns, which eke out many a
watch, seemed to have failed us now; for we had been so long
together that we had heard each other's stories told over and over
again till we had them by heart; each one knew the whole history
of each of the others, and we were fairly and literally talked
out. Singing and joking we were in no humor for; and, in fact, any
sound of mirth or laughter would have struck strangely upon our
ears, and would not have been tolerated any more than whistling or
a wind instrument. The last resort, that of speculating upon the
future, seemed now to fail us; for our discouraging situation, and
the danger we were really in (as we expected every day to find
ourselves drifted back among the ice), ``clapped a stopper'' upon
all that. From saying ``when we get home,'' we began insensibly to
alter it to ``if we get home,'' and at last the subject was
dropped by a tacit consent.
In this state of things, a new light was struck out, and a new
field opened, by a change in the watch. One of our watch was laid
up for two or three days by a bad hand (for in cold weather the
least cut or bruise ripens into a sore), and his place was
supplied by the carpenter. This was a windfall, and there was a
contest who should have the carpenter to walk with him. As
``Chips'' was a man of some little education, and he and I had had
a good deal of intercourse with each other, he fell in with me in
my walk. He was a Fin, but spoke English well, and gave me long
accounts of his country,-- the customs, the trade, the towns, what
little he knew of the government (I found he was no friend of
Russia), his voyages, his first arrival in America, his marriage
and courtship; he had married a countrywoman of his, a
dress-maker, whom he met with in Boston. I had very little to tell
him of my quiet, sedentary life at home; and in spite of our best
efforts, which had protracted these yarns through five or six
watches, we fairly talked each other out, and I turned him over to
another man in the watch, and put myself upon my own resources.
I commenced a deliberate system of time-killing, which united some
profit with a cheering up of the heavy hours. As soon as I came on
deck, and took my place and regular walk, I began with repeating
over to myself in regular order a string of matters which I had in
my memory,-- the multiplication table and the tables of weights
and measures; the Kanaka numerals; then the States of the Union,
with their capitals; the counties of England, with their shire
towns, and the kings of England in their order, and other things.
This carried me through my facts, and, being repeated
deliberately, with long intervals, often eked out the first two
bells. Then came the Ten Commandments, the thirty-ninth chapter of
Job, and a few other passages from Scripture. The next in the
order, which I seldom varied from, came Cowper's Castaway, which
was a great favorite with me; its solemn measure and gloomy
character, as well as the incident it was founded upon, making it
well suited to a lonely watch at sea. Then his lines to Mary, his
address to the Jackdaw, and a short extract from Table Talk (I
abounded in Cowper, for I happened to have a volume of his poems
in my chest); ``Ille et nefasto'' from Horace, and Goethe's Erl
König. After I had got through these, I allowed myself a more
general range among everything that I could remember, both in
prose and verse. In this way, with an occasional break by
relieving the wheel, heaving the log, and going to the
scuttle-butt for a drink of water, the longest watch was passed
away; and I was so regular in my silent recitations that, if there
was no interruption by ship's duty, I could tell very nearly the
number of bells by my progress.
Our watches below were no more varied than the watch on deck. All
washing, sewing, and reading was given up, and we did nothing but
eat, sleep, and stand our watch, leading what might be called a
Cape Horn life. The forecastle was too uncomfortable to sit up in;
and whenever we were below, we were in our berths. To prevent the
rain and the sea-water which broke over the bows from washing
down, we were obliged to keep the scuttle closed, so that the
forecastle was nearly air-tight. In this little, wet, leaky hole,
we were all quartered, in an atmosphere so bad that our lamp,
which swung in the middle from the beams, sometimes actually
burned blue, with a large circle of foul air about it. Still, I
was never in better health than after three weeks of this life. I
gained a great deal of flesh, and we all ate like horses. At every
watch when we came below, before turning in, the bread barge and
beef kid were overhauled. Each man drank his quart of hot tea
night and morning, and glad enough we were to get it; for no
nectar and ambrosia were sweeter to the lazy immortals than was a
pot of hot tea, a hard biscuit, and a slice of cold salt beef to
us after a watch on deck. To be sure, we were mere animals, and,
had this life lasted a year instead of a month, we should have
been little better than the ropes in the ship. Not a razor, nor a
brush, nor a drop of water, except the rain and the spray, had
come near us all the time; for we were on an allowance of fresh
water; and who would strip and wash himself in salt water on deck,
in the snow and ice, with the thermometer at zero?
After about eight days of constant easterly gales, the wind hauled
occasionally a little to the southward, and blew hard, which, as
we were well to the southward, allowed us to brace in a little,
and stand on under all the sail we could carry. These turns lasted
but a short while, and sooner or later it set in again from the
old quarter; yet at each time we made something, and were
gradually edging along to the eastward. One night, after one of
these shifts of the wind, and when all hands had been up a great
part of the time, our watch was left on deck, with the mainsail
hanging in the buntlines, ready to be set if necessary. It came on
to blow worse and worse, with hail and snow beating like so many
furies upon the ship, it being as dark and thick as night could
make it. The mainsail was blowing and slatting with a noise like
thunder, when the captain came on deck and ordered it to be
furled. The mate was about to call all hands, when the captain
stopped him, and said that the men would be beaten out if they
were called up so often; that, as our watch must stay on deck, it
might as well be doing that as anything else. Accordingly, we went
upon the yard; and never shall I forget that piece of work. Our
watch had been so reduced by sickness, and by some having been
left in California, that, with one man at the wheel, we had only
the third mate and three beside myself to go aloft; so that at
most we could only attempt to furl one yard-arm at a time. We
manned the weather yard-arm, and set to work to make a furl of it.
Our lower masts being short, and our yards very square, the sail
had a head of nearly fifty feet, and a short leech, made still
shorter by the deep reef which was in it, which brought the clew
away out on the quarters of the yard, and made a bunt nearly as
square as the mizzen royal yard. Beside this difficulty, the yard
over which we lay was cased with ice, the gaskets and rope of the
foot and leech of the sail as stiff and hard as a piece of leather
hose, and the sail itself about as pliable as though it had been
made of sheets of sheathing copper. It blew a perfect hurricane,
with alternate blasts of snow, hail, and rain. We had to fist the
sail with bare hands. No one could trust himself to mittens, for
if he slipped he was a gone man. All the boats were hoisted in on
deck, and there was nothing to be lowered for him. We had need of
every finger God had given us. Several times we got the sail upon
the yard, but it blew away again before we could secure it. It
required men to lie over the yard to pass each turn of the
gaskets, and when they were passed it was almost impossible to
knot them so that they would hold. Frequently we were obliged to
leave off altogether and take to beating our hands upon the sail
to keep them from freezing. After some time-- which seemed forever--
we got the weather side stowed after a fashion, and went over to
leeward for another trial. This was still worse, for the body of
the sail had been blown over to leeward, and, as the yard was
a-cock-bill by the lying over of the vessel, we had to light it
all up to windward. When the yard-arms were furled, the bunt was
all adrift again, which made more work for us. We got all secure
at last, but we had been nearly an hour and a half upon the yard,
and it seemed an age. It had just struck five bells when we went
up, and eight were struck soon after we came down. This may seem
slow work; but considering the state of everything, and that we
had only five men to a sail with just half as many square yards of
canvas in it as the mainsail of the Independence, sixty-gun ship,
which musters seven hundred men at her quarters, it is not
wonderful that we were no quicker about it. We were glad enough to
get on deck, and still more to go below. The oldest sailor in the
watch said, as he went down, ``I shall never forget that main
yard; it beats all my going a-fishing. Fun is fun, but furling one
yard-arm of a course at a time, off Cape Horn, is no better than
man-killing.''
During the greater part of the next two days, the wind was pretty
steady from the southward. We had evidently made great progress,
and had good hope of being soon up with the Cape, if we were not
there already. We could put but little confidence in our
reckoning, as there had been no opportunities for an observation,
and we had drifted too much to allow of our dead reckoning being
anywhere near the mark. If it would clear off enough to give a
chance for an observation, or if we could make land, we should
know where we were; and upon these, and the chances of falling in
with a sail from the eastward, we depended almost entirely.
Friday, July 22d. This day we had a steady gale from the
southward, and stood on under close sail, with the yards eased a
little by the weather braces, the clouds lifting a little, and
showing signs of breaking away. In the afternoon, I was below with
Mr. Hatch, the third mate, and two others, filling the bread
locker in the steerage from the casks, when a bright gleam of
sunshine broke out and shone down the companionway, and through
the skylight, lighting up everything below, and sending a warm
glow through the hearts of all. It was a sight we had not seen for
weeks,-- an omen, a godsend. Even the roughest and hardest face
acknowledged its influence. Just at that moment we heard a loud
shout from all parts of the deck, and the mate called out down the
companion-way to the captain, who was sitting in the cabin. What
he said we could not distinguish, but the captain kicked over his
chair, and was on deck at one jump. We could not tell what it was;
and, anxious as we were to know, the discipline of the ship would
not allow of our leaving our places. Yet, as we were not called,
we knew there was no danger. We hurried to get through with our
job, when, seeing the steward's black face peering out of the
pantry, Mr. Hatch hailed him to know what was the matter. ``Lan'
o, to be sure, sir! No you hear 'em sing out, `Lan' o?' De cap'em
say 'im Cape Horn!''
This gave us a new start, and we were soon through our work and on
deck; and there lay the land, fair upon the larboard beam, and
slowly edging away upon the quarter. All hands were busy looking
at it,-- the captain and mates from the quarter-deck, the cook
from his galley, and the sailors from the forecastle; and even Mr.
Nuttall, the passenger, who had kept in his shell for nearly a
month, and hardly been seen by anybody, and whom we had almost
forgotten was on board, came out like a butterfly, and was hopping
round as bright as a bird.
The land was the island of Staten Land, just to the eastward of
Cape Horn; and a more desolate-looking spot I never wish to set
eyes upon,-- bare, broken, and girt with rocks and ice, with here
and there, between the rocks and broken hillocks, a little stunted
vegetation of shrubs. It was a place well suited to stand at the
junction of the two oceans, beyond the reach of human cultivation,
and encounter the blasts and snows of a perpetual winter. Yet,
dismal as it was, it was a pleasant sight to us; not only as being
the first land we had seen, but because it told us that we had
passed the Cape,-- were in the Atlantic,-- and that, with
twenty-four hours of this breeze, we might bid defiance to the
Southern Ocean. It told us, too, our latitude and longitude better
than any observation; and the captain now knew where we were, as
well as if we were off the end of Long Wharf.
In the general joy, Mr. Nuttall said he should like to go ashore
upon the island and examine a spot which probably no human being
had ever set foot upon; but the captain intimated that he would
see the island, specimens and all, in-- another place, before he
would get out a boat or delay the ship one moment for him.
We left the land gradually astern; and at sundown had the Atlantic
Ocean clear before us.