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 snow-storm is exciting, and it does not
wet through the clothes (which is 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 trowsers, - 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 bulk-heads. 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 as dark as a pocket, 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 little items
which go to make up the grand total of the discomforts of a winter
passage round the Cape. Few words were spoken between the watches
as they shifted, the wheel was relieved, the mate took his place
on the quarter-deck, the look-outs 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 deck; and afterwards, whenever the rain was not so violent
as to wash it off, the weatherside 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 each of us, in turn, once in every
other watch, was looked upon as a relief. Even 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.
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