“Blow, boys, blow!”
The chanteyman piped again:—
“Where fever makes the white man shiver!”
And the men roared:—
“Blow, my bully boys, blow!”
In the cold and the wet, in day-light and dark, on sloshing decks they hove and hauled—bawling out the old-time sea choruses as if in defiance to the shriek of the wind and the roaring water. They yelped and barked on “Ranzo”; stamped to “Blow the man down!” and “In Amsterdam there lived a maid,” and wailed plaintively to “Lowlands,” “Shenandoah” and “Fare-well you ladies of Spain.” The chantey is rare melody—inane and unimpressive ashore, but wonderfully inspiring when sung to the organ roll of a big wind, and the human voices rose above the material accompaniment of clanking chains, humming shrouds, clanging wash-ports, the boom of the gale aloft, and the swish and thunder of the sea.
All day and night they drove her storming, decks filled to the rail and wire shroud and steel framing twanging and screeching to the strain of the driving. In the half-deck the boys laid in their bunks—the water a foot deep on the floor—and watched the chilly brine spuirting in through the jambs of the doors and felt the jarring of the steel house as the seas smashed against it. The place dripped water; their blankets and bed-sacks were sopping, and they were wet, cold and hungry, but the aspect of things had changed. The brave southerly—friend of the outward-bounder in fifty-six south—was blowing stiff and strong and driving them away from the regions accursed.
In the grey twilight of the succeeding day, when the patent log had recorded their distance, they cast the deep-sea lead over the bows and Nickerson fingered the line aft on the poop and noted the marks with contentment. “Sixty-five fathoms! She’s makin’ her westing all right!” Then to McKenzie, he said, “Son! Nip aloft an’ see if you kin make out anything like steep rocks or the land ahead. Take these glasses with you.”
From the elevation of the t’gallant rigging he scrutinized the bleak expanse of sea—greying in the half-light—and picked up a dog’s tooth of black rocks against the sky-line far to the northward. “Land ho!” he shouted, pointing with his arm. On deck again, he described them to the captain. “Humph!” grunted he with satisfaction on his stern visage, “Diego Ramirez, I cal’late, or it might be Ildefonso. We’re gittin’ along.... Mister Thompson! At eight bells you’ll git th’ fore an’ mizzen r’yals on her. This southerly’ll ease off as we run north.”