THESEA'SWAY 29 



position. Somewhere to the west and not too many miles away 

 was Hatteras with its maze of shoals and streamers of thunder- 

 ing surf. There was no help for it but to beat into the storm 

 again. Swinging about we got under four reefs and once again 

 breasted the gale. 



By this time it was getting dark. In all these hours we had 

 eaten nothing, nor had we thought of food. Coleman crawled 

 up into the hold and brought back a tin of canned beef which 

 we devoured uncooked. 



Captain Joshua Slocum, in telling of his voyage around the 

 world in the original Spray, had claimed that for hundreds of 

 miles his little ship had steered herself as accurately as if there 

 had been a man at the wheel. Provided, of course, that the wind 

 remained in the same quarter. The feat was accomplished by 

 trimming and adjusting sail and rudder so that there was a 

 perfect balance fore and aft. This claim has been disputed 

 many times, but without foundation. We owe our lives to this 

 one feature. For that evening, exhausted and weary, chilled to 

 the marrow, unable to remain longer on deck, yet afraid to let 

 the ship scud before the wind, we adjusted sail and rudder as 

 Slocum had described. And in all that wild melee of storm the 

 grand little ship plunged sturdily along, straight as an arrow, 

 for the center of the ocean. 



All through that night she sailed with not a soul on deck, 

 tossed and beaten by the worst winter storm of 1929-30. Miles 

 away the great schooner Purnell T. White, in whose com- 

 pany we had put to sea, was also fighting the gale and waging 

 a losing battle. And far and wide, north and south of us that 

 night on the broad Atlantic, sturdy steamers were sending out 

 S.O.S. calls or limping into prort with smashed houses and 

 twisted decks. On and on we pressed, plunging through the 

 waves, bobbing to the top and sliding down the valleys, proof 

 that the old sea captain had not lied. A gallant little ship, the 



