“And it will work us woe”—and so it has proved, for we have had ever since head winds, gales, and storms. These, in the simple creed of the sailor, are the penalties through which expiation is to be made for the crime of having killed the albatros.
Sunday, Feb. 15. Lat. 58° 39′ S., long. 68° 41′ W. We are at last some forty-five miles west of Cape Horn, and about one hundred and sixty south of it. This position we have gained in spite of the elements, by taking prompt advantage of those slight variations which will occur in winds of remarkable constancy; still we are not round the cape; for the wind is dead ahead, and is blowing almost a gale. We are on our larboard tack, close hauled, and shall be obliged this evening to wear ship and stand off to the southeast, where the heave of the sea alone, if the gale continues, will soon throw us back into the meridian of the cape. Such is life at sea; gaining, losing, persevering, and finally triumphing.
8 o’clock, P. M. The cutting gale still continues. The sun has set in gloomy grandeur. As he plunged below the horizon, a flood of flame flashed up through the masses of cloud which overhung his descent. This soon vanished; and now thick darkness settles on the sea. The light of a full moon cannot struggle through it, and the brightest star glimmers on it faintly as the glow-worm on the pall of the coffined dead. Our sailors have had to-day very little of that comfort and rest which belong to the Sabbath. Though sent aloft as seldom as the condition of the ship would allow, still they have been often on the yards, with the rain and sleet driving in their faces. Nor have those on the deck fared much better. When off watch and allowed to reach the berth-deck, they have found their Bibles and tracts. May these scattered rays of heavenly light reach their hearts, and point their hopes to that shore where clouds and storms come not.
Monday, Feb. 16. Our southwest gale went suddenly down last night, and this morning a fresh wind rose in the northwest. We are now laying our course with a fair prospect of getting clear of Cape Horn. I have no desire of ever coming near this cape again. I would give it a berth world-wide.
Here and there a navigator, it is true, has doubled the Cape without encountering the gales which we have experienced. But his good fortune was an exception to a general rule. A man may escape death under the gallows by the breaking of the rope; but then the fifty, who come after him, will swing till dead. This cape has acquired its stormy reputation by its acts. Had nautical theory only invested it with difficulties, they would long since have been dissipated by experience. But what navigators found the Cape a century ago, their successors find it now. It is as true to its stormy character as a lion to his savage instincts. You may as well trifle with the shaking mane of the one as with the awaking tempest of the other.
A distinguished naval commander—the late Commodore Porter—who had cruised in almost every sea, inserted in his journal this significant paragraph: “The passage round Cape Horn, from the eastward, I assert, from my own experience, is the most dangerous, most difficult, and attended with more hardships than that of the same distance in any other part of the world.”
Tuesday, Feb. 17. Lat. 58° 10′ S., long. 73° 33′ W. We are at last round Cape Horn. We have left its stormy steeps astern, and are holding our course, with a stiff northwester, for more congenial climes.
FAREWELL TO CAPE HORN.
Cape of clouds, of hail and thunder,
Towering o’er a savage sea,