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 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.