We got a watch below that night, and the cook managed to heat some coffee, but cold salt beef and hard tack were all that the kids contained when we went below for supper. Wrapped in our damp clothes we managed to peg in a few hours of necessary sleep. Life, for a week afterward, was not worth living, unless one held some latent strain of the old berserker flowing through his veins. It was a fight, and the elements charged us and flanked us in midnight fury, increasingly cold as we edged farther to the south in our attempt to round the meridian of Cape Horn.
In latitude 56° 29' S. and longitude 68° 42' W. from Greenwich, about sixty sea miles S. W. by W. from Cape Horn, lies the island of Diego Ramirez, a weather-worn rock jutting from the black waters of the sub-antarctic. Ten days after fetching away from the Cape, we beat south and sighted this grim sentinel, the outpost of the tempest and the gale--ten days of such seagoing as seldom falls to the men who nowadays go down to the sea in steamers.
Under conditions of the kind we experienced, every man was put to the test, and his worth as a member of the crew clearly established. Fortunately for us, and for the races representative in our small company--of which we boasted quite a few--no strain of yellow fear developed during the days and nights when the work aloft called for the performance of duty dangerous in the extreme. Not one of us but had been shipmates with men lost overboard, or maimed for life in accidents to sail or spars. Never was there a moment's hesitation to lay aloft, or out on a swaying bucking yard in the black cover of night, to grapple with canvas hard and unruly. No work was too trying, and no hours of labor too long. We thought nothing of the eternal injustice of a fate that sent us out to sea to fight for our very lives on a ship far too big for so small a crew to handle safely, if indeed any crew of mere men could ever _safely_ handle so large a ship.
Never was there a suspicion of holding back, and through it all, the discipline of the disgruntled warmer latitudes was dropped and orders were quickly obeyed as a matter of course; yes, as a matter of self-preservation. The disgusting profanity of warmer climes was laid in the discard for a while, and we were men doing men's work.