52, WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
nothing but a clear sweep to Cape Horn to leeward. One — 
realized then how in the Nimrod—in spite of the weather — 
—they always had the security of a big steamer to look to — 
if things came to the worst. We were indeed alone, by 
many hundreds of miles, and never having felt anxious 
about a ship before, the old whaler was to give me a new 
experience. 
“Tn the afternoon of the beginning of the gale I helped 
make fast the T.G. sails, upper topsails and foresail, and 
was horrified on arrival on deck to find that the heavy 
water we continued to ship, was starting the coal bags 
floating in places. ‘These, acting as battering-rams, tore 
adrift some of my carefully stowed petrol cases and endan- 
gered the lot. I had started to make sail fast at 3 p.m. and 
it was 9.30 P.M. when I had finished putting on additional 
lashings to everything I could. So rapidly did the sea get 
up that one was continually afloat and swimming about. I 
turned in for 2 hours and lay awake hearing the crash of 
the seas and thinking how long those cases would stand it, 
till my watch came at midnight as a relief. We were under 
2 lower topsails and hove to, the engines going dead slow 
to assist keeping head to wind. At another time I should 
have been easy in my mind; now the water that came 
aboard was simply fearful, and the wrenching on the old 
ship was enough to worry any sailor called upon to fill his 
decks with garbage fore and aft. Still ‘Risk nothing and 
do nothing,’ if funds could not supply another ship, we 
simply had to overload the one we had, or suffer worse 
things down south. The watch was eventful as the shaking 
up got the fine coal into the bilges, and this mixing with 
the oil from the engines formed balls of coal and grease 
which, ordinarily, went up the pumps easily ; now however 
with the great strains, and hundreds of tons on deck, as she 
continually filled, the water started to come in too fast for 
the half-clogged pumps to cope with. An alternative was 
offered to me in going faster so as to shake up the big 
pump on the main engines, and this I did—in spite of 
myself—and in defiance of the first principles of seaman- 
ship. Of course, we shipped water more and more, and 
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