“It was July when we got off the Cape. You know how it is in that month. Cold, dark, stormy weather, with the giant nor’west sea rolling down from the Pacific. We had been knocking about now, too, for three weeks and were down below 61° south, so it was hard enough. The cold was terrible. Nearly all of us were badly frozen. There wasn’t any floating ice, but the log-line broke from the weight of ice frozen to it as it dipped and rose with the ship.
“It was dark nearly all the time and so gloomy, even when it wasn’t blowing hard; all hands were used up. Jensen kept Johnnie warmed up just the same, and I guess he thought it helped him.
“One day it got still. The wind died away entirely, and the maintop-sail—the only rag we had on her—began to jerk fore and aft, slatting loud as the ship rolled her channels under in a great live sea that came rolling down on us from the north’ard.
“It was so dark at six bells in the afternoon the forms of the men loomed strange like through the gloom as they walked fore and aft in the gangways. It was my watch on deck; but there was nothing to do, so I sat on the step to windward on the poop and smoked to keep warm.
“The mate came on deck after a little while to take a look around, and he called Johnnie to coil down some running rigging at the mizzen.
“‘The bloody glass has fallen an inch since eight bells,” said he, coming to where I sat.
“‘It is sort of bad looking,’ said I, ‘and I don’t quite like the quick run of this sea,—seems to go faster than ever, as if something was behind it.’ And as I spoke the old hooker rammed her nose clear to her knight-heads into a living hill. It rolled under us silently, and the slatting of the topsail and rush of water in the channels were the only sounds it made. The voices of the men jarred on my ears, strange like.
“All of a sudden a long, hoarse cry broke from the gloom and silence to windward.
“‘What’s that?’ asked Johnnie, and he dropped the rope.
“‘That’s the Cape Horn devil,’ said the bos’n, grinning; ‘every time he winks his eye he gives er yell, an’ wice wersa; see?’