“Let go the anchor!”
The anchor dropped with a mighty roar and rattle of chain; sails came down with a run; ropes screamed through the blocks; the topsails fell with a crash; sails swelled out and snapped in the breeze with the boom of cannon; blocks fell about our heads; ropes and chains of every size threshed about the decks, snatching us off our feet and slashing us in the face; men and goats sprawled about the deck. It seemed as if an earthquake had struck us, and in three minutes the work of five toilsome hours had been utterly undone.
When the uproar ceased we began the work of restoring things to order again—furled the sails, raised yards, coiled up the thousand and one ropes that carpeted the deck, attended to many other tasks. To most people this would have seemed work enough for one day. But after less than a half hour for dinner we were called out once more and sent over the side with our paint-pots.
Exactly the same thing happened to us the next day, and the next. Day after day the wind blew steadily in at the mouth of the harbor, holding us there.
A week went by. A ship that had long ridden at anchor near the Glenalvon was towed out to sea and sailed away. The fast mail steamer glided by so close that one of the “boys” whom I had known at the Sailors’ Home waved to me from her deck. A dozen ships went in and out, and still the white cone of Fujiyama gazed down upon us. The harbor of Yokohama came to be a sight hateful to all on board. The crew was worn out in body and spirit, and I began to give up hope of ever again setting foot on land.
But our skipper was forced to hire a tug at last. On the morning of August eleventh we turned out to raise the anchor for the tenth time. The skipper had been rowed ashore the afternoon before, and a tug was waiting to take us out of the harbor. Late in the day she dropped us outside the narrows, and when night fell the Glenalvon was tossing on the open sea.
We had no time to feel dull on the trip across. First of all, the breeze that had held us bottled up in the harbor for twelve days increased to a heavy gale. For more than a week it blew steadily from the same direction. Rain poured constantly. Lashed by the storm, the sea rose mountain high, and the ship reared like a cow-boy’s broncho, or lay on her side like a mortally wounded creature.
A Yokohama street decorated for the Taft party.
There was no standing on the deck. The best pair of sea legs failed to do it. We moved like mountain goats on a mountain-peak, springing from post to railing and from railing to stairway, or dragging ourselves hand over hand along the ropes. After a time the wind changed in direction so often that every square of canvas had to be furled, rolled up, and shaken out again a dozen times a day. The bellow ordering us about was forever ringing in our ears. We lived in the rigging, like apes in tree-tops.