However, when, on our fifty-ninth day out, we were nearing the eastern end of Staten Island, the wind, which had of late been blowing pretty steadily from the northward of west, hauled round more to the southward, and being dead against the Le Maire channel, we were forced to give the island a wide berth, and stand to the outside of it.
It was fine light weather, with clear nights, all the time we had been sailing down the coast; for we could see the Magellan clouds, as they are called, every evening. These are small nebulae, like the Milky Way, which occupy the southern part of the heavens, immediately above Cape Horn, whose proximity they always indicate.
Shortly after our passing Staten Island, however, a change came, the wind blowing in squalls, accompanied by snow and sleety hail, and the sea running high as it only can run in these latitudes; but still, everything went well with us until we were about 55 degrees South and 63 degrees West, when a violent gale sprang up from the north-west.
Everything was hauled down and clewed up, the ship lying-to under her reefed main-topsail and fore-topmast staysail, and Captain Billings was just saying to me that I was now going to have “a specimen of what Cape Horn weather was like,” when I noticed Mr Macdougall—who had been making an inspection of the ship forwards—come up the poop ladder with his face much graver than usual, although, as a rule, his expression of countenance was not the most cheerful at any time.
“Whatever is the matter with Mr Macdougall?” I said to Captain Billings. “I’m certain something has happened, or he would not look so serious!”
“Bless you, Martin, you mustn’t judge by his phiz. I daresay the men have only been skylarking in the fo’c’s’le, and it doesn’t please him.”
But it was something far more important than that which had occasioned the gravity of the mate’s face, as the skipper soon heard; for, on Mr Macdougall coming up close to us, he whispered something in the skipper’s ear which made him turn as white as a sheet.
“Martin, Martin,” he said to me, dropping his voice, however, so that the men might not hear the terrible news before it was absolutely necessary to tell them, “the coals are on fire in the main hold!”