Aug. 29, 1908.] 
was off bottom. With a couple of mates and 
three extra seamen to help us the work was 
quite light and we hove up our anchor and had 
all sail set in a very short time. 
The wind—what little there was of it—was 
off shore, and the bark, heavily loaded, gathered 
headway slowly. So before we had made two 
miles of offing, we had the cables unbent and 
stowed and the deck pretty well cleared up. 
Then the two captains, their mates and sailors 
dropped over into their boat and headed back 
for Caleta Buena, now far astern. As we let 
go their line, they gave us three cheers, so we, 
lining up along our rail, returned it with three 
hearty ones and a tiger, for now that we were 
homeward bound, every one was in the best of 
spirits. 
The officers encouraged us when they gave an 
order, and we were only too eager to obey, for 
every foot the bark sailed now was so much 
nearer home. Why it was, I cannot tell, but 
the simple knowledge that we were homeward 
bound raised my spirits wonderfully. I sup¬ 
pose it was the excitement we were worked up 
to. We had everything to encourage us now; 
the four dreary months of work on the coast 
were over, and we would be home with our 
friends again as soon as a hard driven ship 
could take us. We knew the old man would 
drive her and expected to be called out many 
a watch below to “crack on”; but we were 
willing to do it now and pulled with the strength 
and will of two men. Songs and shanties were 
indulged in freely and all sorts of witticisms 
exchanged while hauling ropes. 
But when I stood my lonely trick at the 
wheel that night from eight o’clock until ten 
and the reaction from the excitement of the day 
set in, I felt quite blue, for, after all, it was 
not a matter of a few days or even weeks, but 
all of a three months’ trip that lay before us. 
And a great deal could happen in three months 
on the sea. 
Cape Horn had to be doubled in what was 
the fall of the year down there, and we were 
now but poorly supplied with clothes for those 
frozen latitudes. We had light headwinds for 
a week or so after leaving the coast, and “full 
and bye” was the course the helmsman was 
given. Braced up sharp on a wind with every¬ 
thing set the bark crept slowly to the south¬ 
ward and westward. 
The mates took advantage of the fine weather 
we were having to tighten up the rigging that 
had all come slack since the heavy saltpeter 
had been loaded aboard. The boat was lashed 
on deck again and the cable hauled up on deck, 
blackened, and then stowed away again down 
in that dark, cave-like box, built for it under 
the windlass, up in the very eyes of the bark. 
It was like going down into a mine to climb 
down with a lantern into this place and haul 
the chain about with the chain hooks. All this 
had to be done in fine weather while the decks 
were dry, for we had to have the fore hatch 
opened to get down into the chain locker, and 
this hatch had to be battened down in bad 
weather. 
I was kept at work painting the name boards 
on the quarters and scroll work on the figure 
head, and one day, as I sat in a bos’ns chair 
slung over the bows tracing over with yellow 
paint the vine-like ornament that adorned her 
stern, with a pot of paint and a couple of 
brushes hanging over the side with me, and the 
mate leaning over the rail on the fo’castle head 
watching me, I happened to knock one of the 
brushes out of the paint por overboard. 
“Jump over after it!” shouted the mate, ex¬ 
citedly. “Jump! jump! It’s a bran’ new brush; 
I just bought it myself with my own money, 
and now look! Jump; I’ll throw you a line aft!” 
At first I was going to do so. The bark was 
hardly moving through the water, and the brush 
was floating aft along the side very slowly. I 
could easily have swam and caught it. but I 
stopped to think a moment, and the shadowy 
forms of those four or five sharks that I had 
seen from aloft that morning, deep down 
under the bark’s hull, came into my mind. 
“Oh, no!” I replied, “I guess not.” But aft 
we ran, and getting into a bowline the mate 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
had made in the end of a brace, he lowered me 
down to the water, and as the brush came along 
I caught it. 
When we were not painting we were mussing 
about the rigging, setting up the topmast 
rigging or reeving new lanyards, repairing rat¬ 
lines. etc., and the captain, when in a sour 
humor, as he sometimes got, would give me all 
kinds of jobs to do, from putting a long splice 
in the main buntline to reeving royal clewlines. 
He was kind of mad to think that we had run 
away, and as I was the one that had coaxed 
him to let us go ashore, he seemed to consider 
me the only one responsible for the trouble he 
had been put to. He would tell the mate to 
give me a certain job, and then when I started 
to do it, he would come and stand over me and 
make all manner of fun of me. 
“You’re a healthy kind of a sailor,” he’d say. 
And as I’d tuck a strand in a splice, he’d say, 
“Is that the way you learned to splice when you 
were a-yachting?” or “What kind of a splice do 
you call that?” And then, when he found he 
couldn’t get me mad that way, he’d say, “I 
guess I’ll have to disrate you, Davis, you had 
a nerve to ship as able seaman, you did.” 
This used to make me mad, and I’d say, 
“Well, go ahead and break; I don’t care a 
hang.” But he never did, he simply talked that 
way to bulldoze me and pass away what was to 
him a monotonous time. At other times he 
was the very opposite, coming into the fo’castle 
when our watch was below and I’d be lying 
full length in my coffin-like bunk, looking over 
sketches or writing in my log book, and ask to 
see what I had sketched lately. One morning 
he came into the fo’castle and gave me three 
or four small pieces of onyx, pure stone that 
he had picked up on the surface of the ground 
in Chili, and said I could have them made into 
cuff buttons when I got home; another time I 
was stripped to the waist, trying to wash in a 
quarter of a bucket of water, when he came 
forw r ard. He watched us, for the rest of our 
watch were doing the same. It was a warm 
day, and we had everything out on deck to air. 
To wipe myself dry I took a clean pair of 
woolen socks and mopped away, ignorant of 
the fact that my face was being covered with 
blue lint, for we didn’t have such a thing as a 
looking glass. When he saw me, the captain 
laughed outright, and said, “That’s what you 
get for running away. Ain’t you glad you went 
so you can sleep in gunny bags and wipe your 
face with socks?” 
“Oh, I like it, it’s out of sight!” I replied, 
mopping away. “And if I had the chance, I’d 
run again.” 
When I said this, he made a jump for me, 
but I lit out around the galley and just escaped 
one of my rubber boots he had hove at me. 
He chased me around the house and then sud¬ 
denly put on his dignified look and walked aft, 
monarch of all he surveyed. So things went 
on; sometimes he’d be ready for a joke and 
sometimes cross as a bear and ready to let fly 
fist or foot at us. 
Every spare moment our watch had below 
was spent in patching up old clothes to keep 
out the cold weather we were approaching. 
There was nothing left in the slop chest but a 
few socks and one or two suits of underclothes, 
and these were drawn out by the most needy in 
our watch. 
Any man who says sailors are a bad lot of 
men should be thrown among them at such a 
time as this, and they would soon be convinced 
that such a statement was false. If one man 
had a couple of pair of socks while another had 
none, it was, “Here, you take these, I’ve got 
enough,” and over would go a pair of socks. 
Underclothes and everything that was needed 
to keep out the cutting wind was cheerfully 
divided among the watch; and not only our 
watch, but the other fellows also helped us 
out a little. Charlie had a coat that was used 
continually in cold weather. He would take 
it off when our watch came on deck and give 
it to Joe to put on. It was the most remarkable 
coat I ever saw. Charlie called it “Old Cape 
Horner,” and said this was the third voyage he 
had used it around the Horn. It certainly 
345 
ARTHUR BINNEY, 
(Formerly Stewart & Binnky.) 
Naval Architect and Yacht Brokar. 
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Cable Address, "Designer,” Boston, 
OnKAMAN ilOYT, 
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Canoe and Boat Buildinf. 
and comprehensive directions for the' conslrafioEof 
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