Two Years Before the Mast
having something to do; and when the tackle was manned to bowse the
anchor home, notwithstanding the desolation of the scene, we struck up
"Cheerily ho!" in full chorus. This pleased the mate, who rubbed his
hands and cried out--"That's right, my boys; never say die! That sounds
like the old crew!" and the captain came up, on hearing the song, and
said to the passenger, within hearing of the man at the wheel,--"That
sounds like a lively crew. They'll have their song so long as there're
enough left for a chorus!"
This preparation of the cable and anchors was for the passage of the
straits; for, being very crooked, and with a variety of currents, it is
necessary to come frequently to anchor. This was not, by any means, a
pleasant prospect, for, of all the work that a sailor is called upon to
do in cold weather, there is none so bad as working the ground-tackle.
The heavy chain cables to be hauled and pulled about the decks with
bare hands; wet hawsers, slip-ropes, and buoy-ropes to be hauled
aboard, dripping in water, which is running up your sleeves, and
freezing; clearing hawse under the bows; getting under weigh and
coming-to, at all hours of the night and day, and a constant look-out
for rocks and sands and turns of tides;--these are some of the
disagreeables of such a navigation to a common sailor. Fair or foul,
he wants to have nothing to do with the ground-tackle between port and
port. One of our hands, too, had unluckily fallen upon a half of an
old newspaper which contained an account of the passage, through the
straits, of a Boston brig, called, I think, the Peruvian, in which she
lost every cable and anchor she had, got aground twice, and arrived at
Valparaiso in distress. This was set off against the account of the A.
J. Donelson, and led us to look forward with less confidence to the
passage, especially as no one on board had ever been through, and the
captain had no very perfect charts. However, we were spared any
further experience on the point; for the next day, when we must have
been near the Cape of Pillars, which is the south-west point of the
mouth of the straits, a gale set in from the eastward, with a heavy
fog, so that we could not see half of the ship's length ahead. This, of
course, put an end to the project, for the present; for a thick fog and
a gale blowing dead ahead are not the most favorable circumstances for
the passage of difficult and dangerous straits. This weather, too,
seemed likely to last for some time, and we could not think of beating
about the mouth of the straits for a week or two, waiting for a
favorable opportunity; so we braced up on the larboard tack, put the
ship's head due south, and struck her off for Cape Horn again.
[1] The proportions of the ingredients of the tea that was made for us
(and ours, as I have before stated, was a favorable specimen of
American merchantmen) were, a pint of tea, and a pint and a half of
molasses, to about three gallons of water.
These are all boiled down together in the "coppers," and before serving
it out, the mess is stirred up with a stick, so as to give each man his
fair share of sweetening and tea-leaves. The tea for the cabin is, of
course, made in the usual way, in a tea-pot, and drank with sugar.
[2] I do not wish these remarks, so far as they relate to the saving of
expense in the outfit, to be applied to the owners of our ship, for she
was supplied with an abundance of stores, of the best kind that are
given to seamen;, though the dispensing of them is necessarily left to
the captain, Indeed, so high was the reputation of "the employ" among
men and officers, for the character and outfit of their vessels, and
for their liberality in conducting their voyages, that when it was
known that they had a ship fitting out for a long voyage, and that
hands were to be shipped at a certain time,--a half hour before the
time, as one of the crew told me, numbers of sailors were steering down
the wharf, hopping over the barrels, like flocks of sheep.
CHAPTER XXXII
ICE AGAIN--A BEAUTIFUL AFTERNOON--CAPE HORN--"LAND HO!"--HEADING FOR
HOME
In our first attempt to double the Cape, when we came up to the
latitude of it, we were nearly seventeen hundred miles to the westward,
but, in running for the straits of Magellan, we stood so far to the
eastward, that we made our second attempt at a distance of not more
than four or five hundred miles; and we had great hopes, by this means,
to run clear of the ice; thinking that the easterly gales, which had
prevailed for a long time, would have driven it to the westward. With
the wind about two points free, the yards braced in a little, and two
close-reefed topsails and a reefed foresail on the ship, we made great
way toward the southward and, almost every watch, when we came on deck,
the air seemed to grow colder, and the sea to run higher. Still, we
saw no ice, and had great hopes of going clear of it altogether, when,
one afternoon, about three o'clock, while we were taking a siesta
during our watch below, "All hands!" was called in a loud and fearful
voice. "Tumble up here, men!--tumble up!--don't stop for your
clothes--before we're upon it!" We sprang out of our berths and
hurried upon deck.
The loud, sharp voice of the captain was heard giving orders, as though
for life or death, and we ran aft to the braces, not waiting to look
ahead, for not a moment was to be lost. The helm was hard up, the after
yards shaking, and the ship in the act of wearing.
Slowly, with stiff ropes and iced rigging, we swung the yards round,
everything coming hard, and with a creaking and rending sound, like
pulling up a plank which had been frozen into the ice. The ship wore
round fairly, the yards were steadied, and we stood off on the other
tack, leaving behind us, directly under our larboard quarter, a large
ice island, peering out of the mist, and reaching high above our tops,
while astern; and on either side of the island, large tracts of
field-ice were dimly seen, heaving and rolling in the sea. We were now
safe, and standing to the northward; but, in a few minutes more, had it
not been for the sharp look-out of the watch, we should have been
fairly upon the ice, and left our ship's old bones adrift in the
Southern ocean. After standing to the northward a few hours, we wore
ship, and the wind having hauled, we stood to the southward and
eastward. All night long, a bright lookout was kept from every part of
the deck; and whenever ice was seen on the one bow or the other, the
helm was shifted and the yards braced, and by quick working of the ship
she was kept clear. The accustomed cry of "Ice ahead!"--"Ice on the
lee bow!"--"Another island!" in the same tones, and with the same
orders following them, seemed to bring us directly back to our old
position of the week before.
During our watch on deck, which was from twelve to four, the wind came
out ahead, with a pelting storm of hail and sleet, and we lay hove-to,
under a close-reefed main topsail, the whole watch. During the next
watch it fell calm, with a drenching rain, until daybreak, when the
wind came out to the westward, and the weather cleared up, and showed
us the whole ocean, in the course which we should have steered, had it
not been for the head wind and calm, completely blocked up with ice.
Here then our progress was stopped, and we wore ship, and once more
stood to the northward and eastward; not for the straits of Magellan,
but to make another attempt to double the Cape, still farther to the
eastward; for the captain was determined to get round if perseverance
could do it; and the third time, he said, never failed.
With a fair wind we soon ran clear of the field-ice, and by noon had
only the stray islands floating far and near upon the ocean.
The sun was out bright, the sea of a deep blue, fringed with the white
foam of the waves which ran high before a strong south-wester; our
solitary ship tore on through the water, as though glad to be out of
her confinement; and the ice islands lay scattered upon the ocean here
and there, of various sizes and shapes, reflecting the bright rays of
the sun, and drifting slowly northward before the gale. It was a
contrast to much that we had lately seen, and a spectacle not only of
beauty, but of life; for it required but little fancy to imagine these
islands to be animate masses which had broken loose from the "thrilling
regions of thick-ribbed ice," and were working their way, by wind and
current, some alone, and some in fleets, to milder climes. No pencil
has ever yet given anything like the true effect of an iceberg. In a
picture, they are huge, uncouth masses, stuck in the sea, while their
chief beauty and grandeur,--their slow, stately motion; the whirling of
the snow about their summits, and the fearful groaning and cracking of
their parts,--the picture cannot give. This is the large iceberg;
while the small and distant islands, floating on the smooth sea, in the
light of a clear day, look like little floating fairy isles of sapphire.
From a north-east course we gradually hauled to the eastward, and after
sailing about two hundred miles, which brought us as near to the
western coast of Terra del Fuego as was safe, and having lost sight of
the ice altogether,--for the third time we put the ship's head to the
southward, to try the passage of the Cape. The weather continued clear
and cold, with a strong gale from the westward, and we were fast
getting up with the latitude of the Cape, with a prospect of soon being
round. One fine afternoon, a man who had gone into the fore-top to
shift the rolling tackles, sung out, at the top of his voice, and with
evident glee,--"Sail ho!" Neither land nor sail had we seen since
leaving San Diego; and any one who has traversed the length of a whole
ocean alone, can imagine what an excitement such an announcement
produced on board. "Sail ho!" shouted the cook, jumping out of his
galley; "Sail ho!" shouted a man, throwing back the slide of the
scuttle, to the watch below, who were soon out of their berths and on
deck; and "Sail ho!" shouted the captain down the companion-way to the
passenger in the cabin. Besides the pleasure of seeing a ship and
human beings in so desolate a place, it was important for us to speak a
vessel, to learn whether there was ice to the eastward, and to
ascertain the longitude; for we had no chronometer, and had been
drifting about so long that we had nearly lost our reckoning, and
opportunities for lunar observations are not frequent or sure in such a
place as Cape Horn. For these various reasons, the excitement in our
little community was running high, and conjectures were made, and
everything thought of for which the captain would hail, when the man
aloft sung out--"Another sail, large on the weather bow!"
This was a little odd, but so much the better, and did not shake our
faith in their being sails. At length the man in the top hailed, and
said he believed it was land, after all. "Land in your eye!" said the
mate, who was looking through a telescope; "they are ice islands, if I
can see a hole through a ladder;" and a few moments showed the mate to
be right and all our expectations fled; and instead of what we most
wished to see, we had what we most dreaded, and what we hoped we had
seen the last of. 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.