The days grow gray. The sun has lost its warmth, and each noon, at
meridian, it is lower in the northern sky. All the old stars have long
since gone, and it would seem the sun is following them. The world—the
only world I know—has been left behind far there to the north, and the
hill of the earth is between it and us. This sad and solitary ocean,
gray and cold, is the end of all things, the falling-off place where
all things cease. Only it grows colder, and grayer, and penguins cry in
the night, and huge amphibians moan and slubber, and great albatrosses,
gray with storm-battling of the Horn, wheel and veer.
* * * * *
“Land ho!” was the cry yesterday morning. I shivered as I gazed at
this, the first land since Baltimore a few centuries ago. There was no
sun, and the morning was damp and cold with a brisk wind that
penetrated any garment. The deck thermometer marked 30—two degrees
below freezing-point; and now and then easy squalls of snow swept past.
All of the land that was to be seen was snow. Long, low chains of
peaks, snow-covered, arose out of the ocean. As we drew closer, there
were no signs of life. It was a sheer, savage, bleak, forsaken land. By
eleven, off the entrance of Le Maire Straits, the squalls ceased, the
wind steadied, and the tide began to make through in the direction we
desired to go.
Captain West did not hesitate. His orders to Mr. Pike were quick and
tranquil. The man at the wheel altered the course, while both watches
sprang aloft to shake out royals and skysails. And yet Captain West
knew every inch of the risk he took in this graveyard of ships.
When we entered the narrow strait, under full sail and gripped by a
tremendous tide, the rugged headlands of Tierra del Fuego dashed by
with dizzying swiftness. Close we were to them, and close we were to
the jagged coast of Staten Island on the opposite shore. It was here,
in a wild bight, between two black and precipitous walls of rock where
even the snow could find no lodgment, that Captain West paused in a
casual sweep of his glasses and gazed steadily at one place. I picked
the spot up with my own glasses and was aware of an instant chill as I
saw the four masts of a great ship sticking out of the water. Whatever
craft it was, it was as large as the _Elsinore_, and it had been but
recently wrecked.
“One of the German nitrate ships,” said Mr. Pike. Captain West nodded,
still studying the wreck, then said:
“She looks quite deserted. Just the same, Mr. Pike, send several of
your best-sighted sailors aloft, and keep a good lookout yourself.
There may be some survivors ashore trying to signal us.”
But we sailed on, and no signals were seen. Mr. Pike was delighted with
our good fortune. He was guilty of walking up and down, rubbing his
hands and chuckling to himself. Not since 1888, he told me, had he been
through the Straits of Le Maire. Also, he said that he knew of
shipmasters who had made forty voyages around the Horn and had never
once had the luck to win through the straits. The regular passage is
far to the east around Staten Island, which means a loss of westing,
and here, at the tip of the world, where the great west wind,
unobstructed by any land, sweeps round and around the narrow girth of
earth, westing is the thing that has to be fought for mile by mile and
inch by inch. The Sailing Directions advise masters on the Horn
passage: _Make Westing_. _Whatever you do_, _make westing_.
When we emerged from the straits in the early afternoon the same steady
breeze continued, and in the calm water under the lee of Tierra del
Fuego, which extends south-westerly to the Horn, we slipped along at an
eight-knot clip.
Mr. Pike was beside himself. He could scarcely tear himself from the
deck when it was his watch below. He chuckled, rubbed his hands, and
incessantly hummed snatches from the Twelfth Mass. Also, he was
voluble.
“To-morrow morning we’ll be up with the Horn. We’ll shave it by a dozen
or fifteen miles. Think of it! We’ll just steal around! I never had
such luck, and never expected to. Old girl _Elsinore_, you’re rotten
for’ard, but the hand of God is at your helm.”
Once, under the weather cloth, I came upon him talking to himself. It
was more a prayer.
“If only she don’t pipe up,” he kept repeating. “If only she don’t pipe
up.”
Mr. Mellaire was quite different.
“It never happens,” he told me. “No ship ever went around like this.
You watch her come. She always comes a-smoking out of the sou’west.”
“But can’t a vessel ever steal around?” I asked.
“The odds are mighty big against it, sir,” he answered. “I’ll give you
a line on them. I’ll wager even, sir, just a nominal bet of a pound of
tobacco, that inside twenty-four hours we’ll be hove to under
upper-topsails. I’ll wager ten pounds to five that we’re not west of
the Horn a week from now; and, fifty to fifty being the passage, twenty
pounds to five that two weeks from now we’re not up with fifty in the
Pacific.”
As for Captain West, the perils of Le Maire behind, he sat below, his
slippered feet stretched before him, smoking a cigar. He had nothing to
say whatever, although Margaret and I were jubilant and dared duets
through all of the second dog-watch.
* * * * *
And this morning, in a smooth sea and gentle breeze, the Horn bore
almost due north of us not more than six miles away. Here we were, well
abreast and reeling off westing.
“What price tobacco this morning?” I quizzed Mr. Mellaire.
“Going up,” he came back. “Wish I had a thousand bets like the one with
you, sir.”
I glanced about at sea and sky and gauged the speed of our way by the
foam, but failed to see anything that warranted his remark. It was
surely fine weather, and the steward, in token of the same, was trying
to catch fluttering Cape pigeons with a bent pin on a piece of thread.
For’ard, on the poop, I encountered Mr. Pike. It _was_ an encounter,
for his salutation was a grunt.
“Well, we’re going right along,” I ventured cheerily.
He made no reply, but turned and stared into the gray south-west with
an expression sourer than any I had ever seen on his face. He mumbled
something I failed to catch, and, on my asking him to repeat it, he
said:
“It’s breeding weather. Can’t you see it?”
I shook my head.
“What d’ye think we’re taking off the kites for?” he growled.
I looked aloft. The skysails were already furled; men were furling the
royals; and the topgallant-yards were running down while clewlines and
buntlines bagged the canvas. Yet, if anything, our northerly breeze
fanned even more gently.
“Bless me if I can see any weather,” I said.
“Then go and take a look at the barometer,” he grunted, as he turned on
his heel and swung away from me.
In the chart-room was Captain West, pulling on his long sea-boots. That
would have told me had there been no barometer, though the barometer
was eloquent enough of itself. The night before it had stood at 30.10.
It was now 28.64. Even in the pampero it had not been so low as that.
“The usual Cape Horn programme,” Captain West smiled to me, as he stood
up in all his lean and slender gracefulness and reached for his long
oilskin coat.
Still I could scarcely believe.
“Is it very far away?” I inquired.
He shook his head, and forebore in the act of speaking to lift his hand
for me to listen. The _Elsinore_ rolled uneasily, and from without came
the soft and hollow thunder of sails emptying themselves against the
masts and gear.
We had chatted a bare five minutes, when again he lifted his head. This
time the _Elsinore_ heeled over slightly and remained heeled over,
while the sighing whistle of a rising breeze awoke in the rigging.
“It’s beginning to make,” he said, in the good old Anglo-Saxon of the
sea.
And then I heard Mr. Pike snarling out orders, and in my heart
discovered a growing respect for Cape Horn—Cape Stiff, as the sailors
call it.
An hour later we were hove to on the port tack under upper-topsails and
foresail. The wind had come out of the south-west, and our leeway was
setting us down upon the land. Captain West gave orders to the mate to
stand by to wear ship. Both watches had been taking in sail, so that
both watches were on deck for the manoeuvre.
It was astounding, the big sea that had arisen in so short a time. The
wind was blowing a gale that ever, in recurring gusts, increased upon
itself. Nothing was visible a hundred yards away. The day had become
black-gray. In the cabin lamps were burning. The view from the poop,
along the length of the great labouring ship, was magnificent. Seas
burst and surged across her weather-rail and kept her deck half filled,
despite the spouting ports and gushing scuppers.
On each of the two houses and on the poop the ship’s complement, all in
oilskins, was in groups. For’ard, Mr. Mellaire had charge. Mr. Pike
took charge of the ’midship-house and the poop. Captain West strolled
up and down, saw everything, said nothing; for it was the mate’s
affair.
When Mr. Pike ordered the wheel hard up, he slacked off all the
mizzen-yards, and followed it with a partial slacking of the
main-yards, so that the after-pressures were eased. The foresail and
fore-lower- and-upper-topsails remained flat in order to pay the head
off before the wind. All this took time. The men were slow, not strong,
and without snap. They reminded me of dull oxen by the way they moved
and pulled. And the gale, ever snorting harder, now snorted
diabolically. Only at intervals could I glimpse the group on top the
for’ard-house. Again and again, leaning to it and holding their heads
down, the men on the ’midship-house were obliterated by the drive of
crested seas that burst against the rail, spouted to the lower-yards,
and swept in horizontal volumes across to leeward. And Mr. Pike, like
an enormous spider in a wind-tossed web, went back and forth along the
slender bridge that was itself a shaken thread in the blast of the
storm.
So tremendous were the gusts that for the time the _Elsinore_ refused
to answer. She lay down to it; she was swept and racked by it; but her
head did not pay off before it, and all the while we drove down upon
that bitter, iron coast. And the world was black-gray, and violent, and
very cold, with the flying spray freezing to ice in every lodgment.
We waited. The groups of men, head down to it, waited. Mr. Pike,
restless, angry, his blue eyes as bitter as the cold, his mouth as much
a-snarl as the snarl of the elements with which he fought, waited. The
Samurai waited, tranquil, casual, remote. And Cape Horn waited, there
on our lee, for the bones of our ship and us.
And then the _Elsinore’s_ bow paid off. The angle of the beat of the
gale changed, and soon, with dreadful speed, we were dashing straight
before it and straight toward the rocks we could not see. But all doubt
was over. The success of the manoeuvre was assured. Mr. Mellaire,
informed by messenger along the bridge from Mr. Pike, slacked off the
head-yards. Mr. Pike, his eye on the helmsman, his hand signalling the
order, had the wheel put over to port to check the _Elsinore’s_ rush
into the wind as she came up on the starboard tack. All was activity.
Main- and mizzen-yards were braced up, and the _Elsinore_, snugged down
and hove to, had a lee of thousands of miles of Southern Ocean.
And all this had been accomplished in the stamping ground of storm, at
the end of the world, by a handful of wretched weaklings, under the
drive of two strong mates, with behind them the placid will of the
Samurai.
It had taken thirty minutes to wear ship, and I had learned how the
best of shipmasters can lose their ships without reproach. Suppose the
_Elsinore_ had persisted in her refusal to payoff? Suppose anything had
carried away? And right here enters Mr. Pike. It is his task ever to
see that every rope and block and all the myriad other things in the
vast and complicated gear of the _Elsinore_ are in strength not to
carry away. Always have the masters of our race required henchmen like
Mr. Pike, and it seems the race has well supplied those henchmen.
Ere I went below I heard Captain West tell Mr. Pike that while both
watches were on deck it would be just as well to put a reef in the
foresail before they furled it. The mainsail and the crojack being off,
I could see the men black on the fore-yard. For half-an-hour I
lingered, watching them. They seemed to make no progress with the reef.
Mr. Mellaire was with them, having direct supervision of the job, while
Mr. Pike, on the poop, growled and grumbled and spat endless
blasphemies into the flying air.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Two watches on a single yardarm and unable to put a reef in a
handkerchief like that!” he snorted. “What’ll it be if we’re off here a
month?”
“A month!” I cried.
“A month isn’t anything for Cape Stiff,” he said grimly. “I’ve been off
here seven weeks and then turned tail and run around the other way.”
“Around the world?” I gasped.
“It was the only way to get to ’Frisco,” he answered. “The Horn’s the
Horn, and there’s no summer seas that I’ve ever noticed in this
neighbourhood.”
My fingers were numb and I was chilled through when I took a last look
at the wretched men on the fore-yard and went below to warm up.
A little later, as I went in to table, through a cabin port I stole a
look for’ard between seas and saw the men still struggling on the
freezing yard.
The four of us were at table, and it was very comfortable, in spite of
the _Elsinore’s_ violent antics. The room was warm. The storm-racks on
the table kept each dish in its place. The steward served and moved
about with ease and apparent unconcern, although I noticed an
occasional anxious gleam in his eyes when he poised some dish at a
moment when the ship pitched and flung with unusual wildness.
And now and again I thought of the poor devils on the yard. Well, they
belonged there by right, just as we belonged here by right in this
oasis of the cabin. I looked at Mr. Pike and wagered to myself that
half-a-dozen like him could master that stubborn foresail. As for the
Samurai, I was convinced that alone, not moving from his seat, by a
tranquil exertion of will, he could accomplish the same thing.
The lighted sea-lamps swung and leaped in their gimbals, ever battling
with the dancing shadows in the murky gray. The wood-work creaked and
groaned. The jiggermast, a huge cylinder of hollow steel that
perforated the apartment through deck above and floor beneath, was
hideously vocal with the storm. Far above, taut ropes beat against it
so that it clanged like a boiler-shop. There was a perpetual thunder of
seas falling on our deck and crash of water against our for’ard wall;
while the ten thousand ropes and gears aloft bellowed and screamed as
the storm smote them.
And yet all this was from without. Here, at this well-appointed table,
was no draught nor breath of wind, no drive of spray nor wash of sea.
We were in the heart of peace in the midmost centre of the storm.
Margaret was in high spirits, and her laughter vied with the clang of
the jiggermast. Mr. Pike was gloomy, but I knew him well enough to
attribute his gloom, not to the elements, but to the inefficients
futilely freezing on the yard. As for me, I looked about at the four of
us—blue-eyed, gray-eyed, all fair-skinned and royal blond—and somehow
it seemed that I had long since lived this, and that with me and in me
were all my ancestors, and that their lives and memories were mine, and
that all this vexation of the sea and air and labouring ship was of old
time and a thousand times before.