Mr. Pike paced up and down the narrow house and gritted his teeth. Then he paused. He leaned his arms on the bridge-rail, rested his head on his arms for a full minute, then groaned:
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.” That was all. Then he went aft, slowly, dragging his feet along the bridge.
CHAPTER XXXIII
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
“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:
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
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 he 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
“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
