At Sea. 
BY C. G. DAVIS. 
T was one of these bitter cold nights, 
when wagon wheels fairly squeaked 
as they crunched the snow, the 
thermometer was below zero, when 
in a warm, cozy flat I ran across an 
old diary of mine that brought 
back strongly to memory days when 
in just such weather I had sworn the 
oft-repeated swear of every sailor, that if I 
ever got ashore, I’d never go to sea again—only 
to go. 
Oh, what a joy it is, after a stormy four hours 
on deck, when one just gets his oil skins off 
and pulls off his wet boots and gets rolled up 
snug in the nest-like bunk in the ship’s fore¬ 
castle. The heat of one’s body begins to make 
a steamy heat under the covering of blanket, 
gunny bags and old canvas or anything one 
can get to keep the chill out, and perhaps you 
have just relaxed every muscle into a blissful 
ON THE YARD ARM, REEFING TOPSAIL. 
unconsciousness, when, with the rush and roar 
of the gale suddenly let in by the mate’s opening 
of the fo’castle door, you are roused in a hurry 
by a roar that would rival a lion, “All hands 
on deck!” 
Such was the order that roused me out of a 
tired stupor, into which I had fallen at mid¬ 
night on Oct. 13, 1892. One thing a sailor 
learns above all others, and that is to obey, and 
obey at once without a word of questioning, and 
instinct tells a man the urgency of action by the 
conditions. We were well aware that im¬ 
mediate action was necessary when the mate’s 
basso awoke us. The sounds outside and the 
angle of heel, to the fo’castle floor told us some¬ 
thing was wrong. Having a leeward bunk, it 
was all I could do to swing myself up hill out 
of it. The fo’castle was pitch dark. .Go into 
a closet at night, shut the door and let some one 
pound on the door and throw buckets of water 
against it, and you will hear and see all the four 
men in our watch saw as we landed on our feet. 
The fellows to windward, losing their grip, 
came sliding helter-skelter down on top of Joe 
and I, and as we scrambled on all fours toward 
the door, the mate seized the first two by the 
shirt and sent them sprawling out on deck into 
a couple of feet of water in the scuppers over 
tangled-up buntlines and clewlines that were 
all swept off their pins when the bark’s rail 
went under water; for while we were sleeping, 
the bark had been hit by one of those fierce and 
sudden squalls, called a “pamparo.” that swept 
out to sea off the prairies around the River 
Platte. 
I jumped out on deck in the inky blackness 
that rendered eyesight almost useless. It was 
feel your way both hand and foot. 
What the mate was roaring about, no mortal 
man could ever put understanding^ into type. 
The second mate’s watch were all aloft taking 
in sail, for the bark was likely at any time to 
have her masts ripped out, while aft the old man 
himself in his pajamas was throwing every 
ounce of his muscle on the wheel, with the man 
who had been steering trying to get the bark to 
pay off and right herself, as she was lying over 
on her beam’s ends. 
The mate roared out volley after volley,'ex¬ 
citedly rushing aft as soon as we came piling 
out of the fo’castle door against him, and from 
his orders we gathered that our work was to 
be on the mainmast. So aft we four men 
stumbled, feeling our way along the water casks 
to the waist, and from there to the poop it was 
a monkey-like climb over tangled ropes, in¬ 
visible, but always ready to trip one. 
From the steamy warmth of our bunks to the 
frigid outside atmosphere in one’s stocking feet, 
coatless and hatless, is bad enough; but to get 
a cold baptismal on top of that, is going the 
limit. Just as I landed on deck, I saw aft a 
black line across the sky about as high as the 
rnizzen masthead, beneath which it was inky 
darkness, above a faint hazy moon was shining. 
As I looked, the dark edge rose up, up and 
blotted out what little light the moon had been 
making. 
We scrambled up onto the half deck, the can¬ 
vas overhead putting stage thunder to shame 
by its informal banging and booming. The 
lighter sails way up aloft we could hear ripping 
and cracking like a coach whip. Everything had 
been let go by the run before our watch was 
called, but it was to save the masts and sails 
we were now to battle. 
Getting hold of the weather clewline of the 
mainsail, all four of us bent our backs to fetch 
the clew up snug; then the lee clewline, and 
then buntline and leechlines were all hove taut 
with frantic energy, for our lives depended on 
getting the sail off the sbip. All of us would 
get a hold of the topgallant clewline, the mate 
would let go the sheet, and we would pull like 
four maniacs, stumble along the rail to where, 
by instinct, we knew the upper topsail spilling 
lines were made fast, get hold of the rope— 
which we could tell by the feel of it—and try 
to smother the wind out of that balloon-like 
piece of canvas, and so on one sail after another 
was clewed up. 
Then came the going aloft. The bark by that 
time was gotten off and was scudding before the 
wind, rolling abominally. We rolled up the top¬ 
sail and the mainsail, and then two went up to 
the royal and two to the topgallant sail. In 
one’s underclothes it was a rather airified perch, 
the wind would cut right into one’s very mar¬ 
row. But so long as there was a fight, even if 
it was with a heartless board like canvas sail, 
the animal that was in man came to the sur¬ 
face. and like four bulldogs, we gripped and 
tussled with that wind-hardened canvas. Swear¬ 
ing. joking, even hilariously laughing up there in 
pitch blackness when any one was liable to get 
a slap from the sail, curling up over the yard, 
that would send him overboard to certain death, 
nothing but one’s finger tips jammed under the 
iron rods called the jackstay, to which the sail 
is lashed, and the swinging foot rope below was 
there to hang on to. English ships, they say, 
are compelled by law to have a back rope to 
catch a man if he gets knocked backward; but a 
Yankee ship, as they say boastingly, only want 
men whose hooks (hands) can hold them on a 
yard. Many a time we would have the sail 
muzzled and with all our strength bind it down 
with our elbows. But just as one man would 
release one arm enough to start to pass the 
gasket (as the ropes by which it is lashed snug 
to the yard with are called) the wind would 
get a hold in it and rip the whole balloon-like 
sail out of our grips, taking one’s finger nails 
off to the quick—if they were not already that 
short—as he tries to hold the canvas. 
But while there are prospects of such a fair 
fight, the bull-like spirit of the man keeps his 
blood going fierce and warm, and he has no 
time to think he is in his underclothes instead 
of clad in sea-boots and topcoat. But as on 
that night, when something gets jammed and 
no mortal man has lung power enough to make 
himself heard by those on the deck, and you 
have to hang on inactive while another man 
goes down to yell to the mate to slack the bunt- 
line because it is jammed in such a way you 
cannot stow the sail, it is then indeed the wind 
cuts deep, and Parliamentary English is justi¬ 
fied and strings of it float off in the gale. 
You cannot keep warm up there, sixty feet 
or more in the air, and there is no space to walk 
up and down to keep warm, it is all you can do 
as the bark rolls her rails under to hang on to 
the rigging and bless the mate for being too 
deaf to hear your roaring at him to “slack up!” 
Your joy is complete when you finally land on 
deck and the mate tells you to go forward and 
get on your clothes; that it is now your watch 
on deck for four hours more. Of course it was 
not your fault you lost your four hours’ sleep— 
it’s your luck. 
Another nice time to go aloft is in a whole 
gale of wind, as we had to do a couple of 
weeks later, when the bark had lain for two 
days hove too off Cape Horn under main lower 
topsail only, the staysail and storm trysail hav¬ 
ing blown away. 
For two days we could not go forward on ac¬ 
count of the seas making a clear breach over 
the forward deck. All the crew, what sleep they 
got, went down into the holy sanctuary of the 
main cabin and lay down fully dressed with 
oilskins and sea-boots all on, ready for a call 
at any moment, on the cabin floor. 
One afternoon the mate came to where we 
three in his watch were jammed up one against 
the other, huddled up like sheep trying to keep 
dry and warm in the lee of the coach-house 
door, and gave us several small coils of rope, 
and told us to go up and put them as extra 
gaskets around the weather main yard arm, 
where the hurricane force of the wind was 
HOVE-TO OFF CAPE HORN. IT IS SAFER ALOFT THAN ON DECK IN SUCH WEATHER. 
