“Aye, captain,” returned Joak ruefully. “She’s beginnin’ tae jump aboot, but let me tell ye, ef ye want guid bread ye’ll hae tae rin her steadier fur I canna get ma dough tae rise wi’ th’ shup jugglin’ about like a jumpin’-jack!” And with this dire remark he grabbed at a sliding pot and chocked it off on top of the stove with a rolling rod.
The fiddles were shipped on the fo’c’sle table, and a minimum of dishes were placed upon it at a time. The men ate with their mugs of tea or coffee in their hands, and with a protective arm around their plates, for Helen was beginning to dance. On deck, everything was double-lashed for heavy weather; the foretopmast had been sent down, and the balloon jib and foretopsail rolled up and stowed away in the sail locker. Under winter rig of four lowers the schooner was swinging into the long rollers of the “Forties” and getting ready for her “easting.”
The cold weather came upon them quickly, and Donald donned his winter clothes and saw to boots, mittens, socks, and oil-skins. Though it was supposed to be summer time down south, yet it was bitterly cold and the only tangible evidence of the season was the long daylight—the duration of darkness being but four hours, as the sun was south of the Line. The blue color of the middle-latitude seas had changed to a chill grey-green, and as they made their southing the wind hauled more westerly and blew hard with a vigor and intensity which reminded Donald of other days in this part of the world. At times they glimpsed on the far horizon great islands of dazzling white—outriders of the Antarctic ice, lofty, immense in area, and dangerous in calms and thick weather.
With the single-reefed mainsail boomed over the quarter, whole fores’l, jumbo and jib, the Helen Starbuck commenced to show her heels in the windy latitudes south of fifty. Twelve knots, thirteen knots, fourteen knots were common hourly readings in the gusts, and Nickerson would grunt with satisfaction when he picked off noon to noon runs of three hundred sea miles. Rare travelling, surely! And he would pace the weather alley glancing at sail and sheet to scent a job for the watch in jigging-up slack canvas or yanking a boom inboard. Occasional snow flurries came down the wind and it was bitter on deck o’ nights, but there was always a warm bunk in a warm cabin or fo’c’sle to turn into; good eatable grub at meal times, and a “mug up” of hot coffee or a bite of soft bread or pie for a man to warm his blood with during, or after, a chilly watch.
Then came the day, when, steering east by south, they started to “run their easting down.” They were south of Cape Piller and had got into the swing of the tremendous sea which sweeps around the world in that latitude. The western wind blew hard and strong and Nickerson had the mainsail stowed, the big main boom in the crotch well secured by the crotch-tackles, chain guys and topping-lift, the jib furled and triced up on the fore-stay to keep it from freezing on to the bowsprit, and the jumbo was in the stops.
Under the whole foresail and the squaresail, they were running her before it—a job for nervy men—and the great rollers of the Southern Ocean were piling up in vast battalions, crowned with acres of seething, roaring foam, and almost half a mile from crest to crest. In these mighty undulations, the Helen Starbuck was storming along with the wind whistling in her rigging and a bawling welter of white water sheering away from her sharp bows.
Joak, imprisoned in the fo’c’sle, was endeavouring to cook under conditions which rendered culinary work a herculean task. It was one hand for himself and one for the ship, and he hung between sink and stove doing his best and feeling half sick with the heat of his battened-down fo’c’sle, and the violent swoops and leaps of the ship. Aft in the cabin the watch below slept in the spare bunks so as to be handy for a sudden call. Two men steered, lashed to the wheel-box, and Nickerson stood, muffled to the eyes, in oil-skins and sea-boots, on top of the cabin house with an arm thrust through a stop of the furled mainsail. He was constantly on deck watching ship and sea, looking out for ice, and, ever and anon, grunting advice to the wheelsmen. Steering a running ship in such a sea called for vigilance and skill. Once let her broach-to amid those Cape Horn grey-beards, and she would be gone—rolled over and smashed into kindling in the twinkling of an eye.
Up, up, up, the slopes of these frightful hills of brine she would climb—poise for a moment amidst the roaring white water of the crests with her keel showing clear to the foremast—and then, with a wild swoop, her bows would drive down the fore-front of the comber into the trough with the creaming surge-tops growling, roaring and curling above and behind her. Many times they piled up astern—walls of grey-green water full thirty feet above their heads—and when almost under their toppling crests, the brave little vessel would leap forward and the giant comber would plunge over and break on each quarter in a thundering broil of foam which drowned all other sounds.