We looked out this morning for the little bark thrown into vision last evening by a gush of sunset light. But she is now nowhere to be seen. She relieved for the moment our sense of utter dreariness, and will again if she comes within the dark line of our vision. It is not good for man to be alone; and this is as true of a ship at sea as of Adam in Eden. There is only one exhibition of social solitude so dreary as that of a single ship at sea, and that is the condition of an old bachelor.
A large number of the albatros and stormy petrel have been following us for hours to pick up the crumbs which the cooks of the different messes throw over. The albatros gets all the larger bits; the little petrel darts about under its overshadowing wings, and looks up for permission like an infant to its mother’s eyes. The night has closed over us; not a star looks out through the thick mass of clouds above, and only the combing billow flashes through the darkness beneath.
Night, and storm, and darkness, and the ocean,
Heaving ’gainst their strength its sullen motion.
Wednesday, Feb. 4. Our gale which had held out three days broke down last night in the mid-watch, but the fragments of its strength have had sufficient calcitrating force to prevent our making any perceptible progress to-day. We are this evening within a few miles of where we were at the last sunset, and the wind, which comes in occasional puffs, is still in our teeth. This is doubling Cape Horn.
There is no mistake about this cape. It has shoved itself out here for no idle or mistaken purpose. It always has, and always will, exact homage from seamen. It may now and then, from some whim, allow a ship to pass without these tokens of fealty, just as the pope may permit a subject to come into his presence without kissing his great toe. But then it may put the very next ship into a quarantine from which she would be glad to escape into a Spanish lazaretto.
Our little bark is again in sight, hovering like an unquiet cloud on the horizon. She bears up with right good heart against the winds. Steady, my little ocean friend! Keep up thy indomitable courage; thou shalt yet weather this cape of ice and thunder. To-day we harpooned a cape porpoise. It differs widely from those found in other zones; is more lithe and slender; seems formed for speed, and has beautiful black and white stripes running from head to tail; the flesh is less dry, and the liver might almost tempt a piscivorous epicure.
Thursday, Feb. 5. At 4 o’clock P. M., lat. 56° 27′ S., long. 61° 57 W. In the last fifty-two hours we have made but a little more than one degree of latitude, and less than half a degree of longitude. It will take us a long time at this rate to get around Cape Horn.
The wind during the morning came in cold gusty puffs from the south. At noon the whole southern horizon seemed tumbling up in black jagged masses into the sky. This was a signal for reefing, which none could mistake. But the men had hardly got into the tops before the storm was upon us. It came charged with hail and sleet, and lasted some three hours. The masses of cloud then broke asunder, and through their rift the sun-light streamed like a torrent from a forest-covered steep.
Two enormous whales have been plunging about us to-day. Their huge backs as they crossed the hollow of the sea might have been mistaken for a reef of rocks. They blow like a locomotive puffing off steam. Every puff sends up a shower of spray which may be seen at a great distance, and which guides the Nantucketite with his glittering harpoon. But who would trust his vessel in such a sea as this with a dead whale at her side? I should as soon think of lashing to an iceberg.