[MAN LOST OVERBOARD]
At this stage of the voyage hardship had become a habit; rotten tack and half-cooked cracker hash all went the same way; we were toughened to the grind. A mess of weevil-ridden hard bread was disposed of by knocking the worms out and eating what was left, the crumby, mealy stuff, soggy with damp, was often made more palatable by heating in the galley with a sprinkle of molasses or a coating of our abundant sugar. The working of the ship was done in grilling discomfort of wet clothing, and the cold added its quota to our troubles day after day. But for all that we were living. The scenes of wild fury that only those who have run before it in the latitudes of Cape Horn can understand, spread about us in a fitting panorama to the tragedy of suffering on our half-drowned deck. Surely the angels must have wondered at the vast ambition of men who dared such dangers and lived such hardships; all of which vast ambition could be summed up in one sentence—the pay of an able seaman out of the port of New York—eighteen dollars per month, minus "advance" and the deduction for "slops," leaving the net earning in the neighborhood of ten or eleven dollars.
We were getting our romance in the raw, however, and, like most things in this world, we were paying for the show—working our way—through experiences that only those who go down to the sea in deepwater sailing ships know anything about.
Endless rows of mighty snarling combers, the howl of sleet-laden wind tearing through the glistening gear aloft, and the blind rush of snowstorms, crusting everything with a powdering of white, gave us a real taste of weather such as I had never experienced before.
"Thank God we are going before it, and not trying to beat back," said Hitchen to me one night, as he came aft to relieve me at the wheel.
John Aahee, of the starboard watch, disappeared and we thought he had been lost overboard. For two days we missed him and kept the news from Black Joe and Kahemuku, who were in a state of low spirits, where the loss of Aahee would have well-nigh proved fatal. On the third day after the absence of John he suddenly reappeared, when the boys of our watch heard a loud knocking on the under side of the forehatch. Having enjoyed a two days' sleep on the sugar in the 'tween deck, he climbed in by way of the forepeak, which had been opened in order to rouse up a barrel of saltpork.
The mate threatened to put him in irons for shirking duty and promised all sorts of dire punishment. However, the poor Kanaka was so far gone that it seemed he never would survive, and I believe he was positively numb when the mate made him finish out the last two hours of the watch on deck by bending over the bilge pump, "to get the sleep out of your eyes, you —— black."
July Fourth found us nearing the end of our southing. We experienced a moderation in the weather, and set the fore and main t'gans'ls. The fore t'gans'l split during a squall that blew up before it had been set an hour, and we at once got busy in sending down this rag and bending another sail which went with a loud "bang!" during the midwatch, Second Mate Tom being on deck and Captain Nichols pacing up and down on the forward side of the wheelhouse.
"There she goes again!" we heard them shouting out on deck, amid the din of wind and the booming of the seas as they fanned away from the flare of our bows, when her head doused down into the back of a roller. The report as the new canvas split was sharp and characteristic, waking most of us, as it was directly overhead.
"I hope they don't call us out," was the thought expressed by all; we plunked down in our blankets with a will as though we were going to wring every last fraction of sleep out of each precious second of the few hours of the watch.