Whatever you do, make westing! make westing!
--Sailing directions for Cape Horn.
For seven weeks the Mary Rogers had been between 50 degrees south in the
Atlantic and 50 degrees south in the Pacific, which meant that for seven
weeks she had been struggling to round Cape Horn. For seven weeks
she had been either in dirt, or close to dirt, save once, and then,
following upon six days of excessive dirt, which she had ridden out
under the shelter of the redoubtable Terra del Fuego coast, she had
almost gone ashore during a heavy swell in the dead calm that had
suddenly fallen. For seven weeks she had wrestled with the Cape Horn
graybeards, and in return been buffeted and smashed by them. She was a
wooden ship, and her ceaseless straining had opened her seams, so that
twice a day the watch took its turn at the pumps.
The Mary Rogers was strained, the crew was strained, and big Dan Cullen,
master, was likewise strained. Perhaps he was strained most of all, for
upon him rested the responsibility of that titanic struggle. He slept
most of the time in his clothes, though he rarely slept. He haunted the
deck at night, a great, burly, robust ghost, black with the sunburn
of thirty years of sea and hairy as an orang-outang. He, in turn, was
haunted by one thought of action, a sailing direction for the Horn:
Whatever you do, make westing! make westing! It was an obsession. He
thought of nothing else, except, at times, to blaspheme God for sending
such bitter weather.
Make westing! He hugged the Horn, and a dozen times lay hove to with the
iron Cape bearing east-by-north, or north-north-east, a score of miles
away. And each time the eternal west wind smote him back and he made
easting. He fought gale after gale, south to 64 degrees, inside the
antarctic drift-ice, and pledged his immortal soul to the Powers of
Darkness for a bit of westing, for a slant to take him around. And he
made easting. In despair, he had tried to make the passage through the
Straits of Le Maire. Halfway through, the wind hauled to the north'ard
of north-west, the glass dropped to 28.88, and he turned and ran before
a gale of cyclonic fury, missing, by a hair's-breadth, piling up the
Mary Rogers on the black-toothed rocks. Twice he had made west to the
Diego Ramirez Rocks, one of the times saved between two snow-squalls by
sighting the gravestones of ships a quarter of a mile dead ahead.
Blow! Captain Dan Cullen instanced all his thirty years at sea to prove
that never had it blown so before. The Mary Rogers was hove to at the
time he gave the evidence, and, to clinch it, inside half an hour the
Mary Rogers was hove down to the hatches. Her new maintopsail and brand
new spencer were blown away like tissue paper; and five sails, furled
and fast under double gaskets, were blown loose and stripped from the
yards. And before morning the Mary Rogers was hove down twice again, and
holes were knocked in her bulwarks to ease her decks from the weight of
ocean that pressed her down.
On an average of once a week Captain Dan Cullen caught glimpses of the
sun. Once, for ten minutes, the sun shone at midday, and ten minutes
afterward a new gale was piping up, both watches were shortening sail,
and all was buried in the obscurity of a driving snow-squall. For
a fortnight, once, Captain Dan Cullen was without a meridian or a
chronometer sight. Rarely did he know his position within half of a
degree, except when in sight of land; for sun and stars remained hidden
behind the sky, and it was so gloomy that even at the best the horizons
were poor for accurate observations. A gray gloom shrouded the world.
The clouds were gray; the great driving seas were leaden gray; the
smoking crests were a gray churning; even the occasional albatrosses
were gray, while the snow-flurries were not white, but gray, under the
sombre pall of the heavens.
Life on board the Mary Rogers was gray--gray and gloomy. The faces
of the sailors were blue-gray; they were afflicted with sea-cuts and
sea-boils, and suffered exquisitely. They were shadows of men. For seven
weeks, in the forecastle or on deck, they had not known what it was to
be dry. They had forgotten what it was to sleep out a watch, and all
watches it was, “All hands on deck!” They caught snatches of agonized
sleep, and they slept in their oilskins ready for the everlasting call.
So weak and worn were they that it took both watches to do the work of
one. That was why both watches were on deck so much of the time. And no
shadow of a man could shirk duty. Nothing less than a broken leg could
enable a man to knock off work; and there were two such, who had been
mauled and pulped by the seas that broke aboard.
One other man who was the shadow of a man was George Dorety. He was the
only passenger on board, a friend of the firm, and he had elected to
make the voyage for his health. But seven weeks of Cape Horn had not
bettered his health. He gasped and panted in his bunk through the long,
heaving nights; and when on deck he was so bundled up for warmth that he
resembled a peripatetic old-clothes shop. At midday, eating at the cabin
table in a gloom so deep that the swinging sea-lamps burned always, he
looked as blue-gray as the sickest, saddest man for'ard. Nor did gazing
across the table at Captain Dan Cullen have any cheering effect upon
him. Captain Cullen chewed and scowled and kept silent. The scowls
were for God, and with every chew he reiterated the sole thought of his
existence, which was make westing. He was a big, hairy brute, and the
sight of him was not stimulating to the other's appetite. He looked
upon George Dorety as a Jonah, and told him so, once each meal, savagely
transferring the scowl from God to the passenger and back again.
Nor did the mate prove a first aid to a languid appetite. Joshua
Higgins by name, a seaman by profession and pull, but a pot-wolloper
by capacity, he was a loose-jointed, sniffling creature, heartless and
selfish and cowardly, without a soul, in fear of his life of Dan Cullen,
and a bully over the sailors, who knew that behind the mate was Captain
Cullen, the law-giver and compeller, the driver and the destroyer, the
incarnation of a dozen bucko mates. In that wild weather at the southern
end of the earth, Joshua Higgins ceased washing. His grimy face usually
robbed George Dorety of what little appetite he managed to accumulate.
Ordinarily this lavatorial dereliction would have caught Captain
Cullen's eye and vocabulary, but in the present his mind was filled with
making westing, to the exclusion of all other things not contributory
thereto. Whether the mate's face was clean or dirty had no bearing
upon westing. Later on, when 50 degrees south in the Pacific had been
reached, Joshua Higgins would wash his face very abruptly. In the
meantime, at the cabin table, where gray twilight alternated with
lamplight while the lamps were being filled, George Dorety sat between
the two men, one a tiger and the other a hyena, and wondered why God had
made them. The second mate, Matthew Turner, was a true sailor and a man,
but George Dorety did not have the solace of his company, for he ate by
himself, solitary, when they had finished.
On Saturday morning, July 24, George Dorety awoke to a feeling of life
and headlong movement. On deck he found the Mary Rogers running off
before a howling south-easter. Nothing was set but the lower topsails
and the foresail. It was all she could stand, yet she was making
fourteen knots, as Mr. Turner shouted in Dorety's ear when he came on
deck. And it was all westing. She was going around the Horn at last...
if the wind held. Mr. Turner looked happy. The end of the struggle was
in sight. But Captain Cullen did not look happy. He scowled at Dorety
in passing. Captain Cullen did not want God to know that he was pleased
with that wind. He had a conception of a malicious God, and believed
in his secret soul that if God knew it was a desirable wind, God would
promptly efface it and send a snorter from the west. So he walked softly
before God, smothering his joy down under scowls and muttered curses,
and, so, fooling God, for God was the only thing in the universe of
which Dan Cullen was afraid.
All Saturday and Saturday night the Mary Rogers raced her westing.
Persistently she logged her fourteen knots, so that by Sunday morning
she had covered three hundred and fifty miles. If the wind held, she
would make around. If it failed, and the snorter came from anywhere
between south-west and north, back the Mary Rogers would be hurled and
be no better off than she had been seven weeks before. And on Sunday
morning the wind was failing. The big sea was going down and running
smooth. Both watches were on deck setting sail after sail as fast as the
ship could stand it. And now Captain Cullen went around brazenly before
God, smoking a big cigar, smiling jubilantly, as if the failing wind
delighted him, while down underneath he was raging against God for
taking the life out of the blessed wind. Make westing! So he would, if
God would only leave him alone. Secretly, he pledged himself anew to
the Powers of Darkness, if they would let him make westing. He pledged
himself so easily because he did not believe in the Powers of Darkness.
He really believed only in God, though he did not know it. And in his
inverted theology God was really the Prince of Darkness. Captain Cullen
was a devil-worshipper, but he called the devil by another name, that
was all.
At midday, after calling eight bells, Captain Cullen ordered the royals
on. The men went aloft faster than they had gone in weeks. Not alone
were they nimble because of the westing, but a benignant sun was shining
down and limbering their stiff bodies. George Dorety stood aft, near
Captain Cullen, less bundled in clothes than usual, soaking in the
grateful warmth as he watched the scene. Swiftly and abruptly the
incident occurred. There was a cry from the foreroyal-yard of “Man
overboard!” Somebody threw a life-buoy over the side, and at the same
instant the second mate's voice came aft, ringing and peremptory--
“Hard down your helm!”
The man at the wheel never moved a spoke. He knew better, for Captain
Dan Cullen was standing alongside of him. He wanted to move a spoke, to
move all the spokes, to grind the wheel down, hard down, for his comrade
drowning in the sea. He glanced at Captain Dan Cullen, and Captain Dan
Cullen gave no sign.
“Down! Hard down!” the second mate roared, as he sprang aft.
But he ceased springing and commanding, and stood still, when he saw
Dan Cullen by the wheel. And big Dan Cullen puffed at his cigar and said
nothing. Astern, and going astern fast, could be seen the sailor. He had
caught the life-buoy and was clinging to it. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.
The men aloft clung to the royal yards and watched with terror-stricken
faces. And the Mary Rogers raced on, making her westing. A long, silent
minute passed.
“Who was it?” Captain Cullen demanded.
“Mops, sir,” eagerly answered the sailor at the wheel.
Mops topped a wave astern and disappeared temporarily in the trough.
It was a large wave, but it was no graybeard. A small boat could live
easily in such a sea, and in such a sea the Mary Rogers could easily
come to. But she could not come to and make westing at the same time.
For the first time in all his years, George Dorety was seeing a real
drama of life and death--a sordid little drama in which the scales
balanced an unknown sailor named Mops against a few miles of longitude.
At first he had watched the man astern, but now he watched big Dan
Cullen, hairy and black, vested with power of life and death, smoking a
cigar.
Captain Dan Cullen smoked another long, silent minute. Then he removed
the cigar from his mouth. He glanced aloft at the spars of the Mary
Rogers, and overside at the sea.
“Sheet home the royals!” he cried.
Fifteen minutes later they sat at table, in the cabin, with food served
before them. On one side of George Dorety sat Dan Cullen, the tiger, on
the other side, Joshua Higgins, the hyena. Nobody spoke. On deck the men
were sheeting home the skysails. George Dorety could hear their cries,
while a persistent vision haunted him of a man called Mops, alive and
well, clinging to a life-buoy miles astern in that lonely ocean. He
glanced at Captain Cullen, and experienced a feeling of nausea, for the
man was eating his food with relish, almost bolting it.
“Captain Cullen,” Dorety said, “you are in command of this ship, and it
is not proper for me to comment now upon what you do. But I wish to say
one thing. There is a hereafter, and yours will be a hot one.”