Wet Sailing. 
T is a merciful act of 
Providence, no doubt, 
that made the sea salty, 
thereby alleviating the 
sufferings of sailors 
from the intense cold. 
As many times as we 
have been soaking wet, 
with the thermometer 
near the freezing point, 
we can never recall hav¬ 
ing had a cold all the 
time we were at sea, 
which we attribute to 
the salt air and salt 
water surrounding us. 
It is tough work to go a month in wet or 
damp clothes-—tough enough to kill a man were 
he suddenly put to it with no training; but in 
the case of our little bark we had been put 
through a course of sprouts that took every 
ounce of fat off our bones, until we were like a 
pack of half-starved wolves. We had bowled 
through the north and southeast trades for days 
at a time and never touched a brace, and we 
had rolled a week at a time in the tropics 
and hardly ever stopped pulling the braces. 
When we were not pulling and hauling to work 
the ship, the mates saw that we were kept busy, 
unbending and bending sails, unreeving and re¬ 
reeving ropes—it was work, work, work all day 
and half the night. We were bound westward 
around the “corner,” as sailors call Cape Horn, 
and had lain hove to for a week and spent an¬ 
other week making up in westing what we had 
lost by easterly drift, when we got a fairly good 
slant of wind from the northwest. For two 
solid weeks—ever since we poked our nose 
past the lower corner of Staten Land—we had 
lived in wet clothes. 
The second slant of wind gave us a lift, so 
we could lay a course west of south, and the 
old man kept us on the jump at all hours crack¬ 
ing on to’gansels and royals, even when they 
would have to come in again an hour later. 
Hour after hour we fought to get a few more 
miles to the westward, and then late one after¬ 
noon we got a real fair slant of wind, and with 
every stitch of canvas she had the old bark 
went smothering through it, splashing into the 
cross seas formed by the shift of wind, putting 
her fo’castle head clear under occasionally and 
white with suds for yards off the lee bow that 
went racing aft a giddy, seething, whirling mass 
of white, soapy suds. 
She was walking Spanish in grand style, and 
it was high time she did get a fair lift. Every 
man in the crew was broken out in painful salt¬ 
water boils, which, combined with the salt food, 
wet clothes, wet beds and general depressed 
spirits of the crew, made us an unhappy lot of 
men. Even the sun seemed to have forsaken 
us in his circling around the earth away off to 
the northland and was hidden from sight more 
than half the twenty-four hours, and even when 
his gray, weak light did announce that daylight 
was at hand, it was a cheerless sort of a day 
that lent no warmth to cheer us, and we longed 
for tropical weather again. Our watch had just 
gone below in the afternoon watch from noon 
to 4 P. M. 
Joe and I were standing in front of our bunks, 
trying to light our pipes with one hand, while 
we hung on to the edge of the bunk with the 
other, for the'bark was rolling so we could not 
A FAIR SLANT OF WIND. 
keep our footing without hanging on. We had 
not yet taken off our oilskins, and Joe, to get 
light enough to see to undress by, had pulled 
the wooden slide back from the window on the 
outside as our side of the fo’castle was to lee¬ 
ward and so in no danger of being broken by 
the sea. But just as he struck his fourth match 
and got it to strike fire, I heard a shout on 
deck, but did not know what it was about. 
Then a shock ran through the bark, as if she 
had struck a rock, and the next instant there 
was a cannon-like report and I clutched the 
edge of the bunk and held on. I did not know 
what had happened, but thought I was over¬ 
board. I felt volumes of water washing me 
about, choking and blinding me. Down my 
neck I felt the icy streams flow, until I was 
chilled through. What had happened? I still 
had hold of something with one hand and hung 
on to it with all my strength. Finally, I felt 
the water leave my face and gasping for breath, 
I opened my eyes. In front of me was a square 
of light*that I recognized as the window, and 
the door, too, stood wide open. Then the bark 
rolled to leeward and again my feet were washed 
from under me, and the water came up to my 
waist. 
Out of the open doorway the water poured, 
and a dark object passed me. going out with the 
current. I grabbed it, and found it was my 
blanket; so wiping the brine from my eyes, I 
looked for more, and standing in the doorway 
as the water poured through it, I caught coats, 
hats, shoes and all kinds of odds and ends, while 
inside, Joe, Bill and Peter were grabbing things 
as they washed back and forth around their feet 
and threw them into an upper empty bunk. 
All the lower bunks were washed completely 
out. and the beds and bedding were running 
with water. There were no scuppers to-the 
fo’castle, so a couple of barrels of water was 
left, as it was not deep enough to flow over the 
raised door sill. This we baled out with our 
pans and a deck bucket, and were a tired and 
disgusted watch when we once more had col¬ 
lected our belongings and relighted the lamp 
that had been washed or blown out. 
The mate came to the door and looked in 
when we were fixing things up. “Didn’t you 
fellows hear me shout?” he asked. 
“Yes, I heard some one yell, but I didn’t 
know what it was about,” I answered. 
“Why, I saw that sea a-coming up to lee¬ 
ward,” he replied. “It broke aboard as high as 
the sheer poles and smashed in the galley 
window and washed out the carpenter shop.” 
We made the best shift we could; some of my 
clothes that were tied up in my clothes bag 
were dry, and these I put on. But my mattress 
and all my blankets were soaking wet, while 
my small wares, such as tobacco, matches, etc., 
were lost and it was over a week later before I 
found them jammed in back of an old water 
barrel that was stowed in the space between 
two bunks. The tobacco I dried in the sun 
and managed to smoke: it was the last package 
I had, and as I did not like to smoke the strong 
plugs of black tobacco we got from the slop 
chest, I was anxious to save it. 
I turned into my own bunk, not liking to use 
any of the other fellows’ bedding; but after 
sleeping for an hour or so I woke up with a 
terrible headache and a suffocated, shrunken 
feeling all over my body and had to get put. 
My bed was too wet, so I climbed up into 
Kaiser’s, as he had offered me the use of his, 
and slept the rest of our watch there. 
The sea, when it broke aboard, smashed in 
the thick glass window, right in front of which 
Joe and I were standing, but the glass never cut 
us, although Charlie, who had the top bunk 
on the opposite side of the fo’castle, found pieces 
of it there when he turned in. Such a surprise 
party as it gave us! It puts me in mind of what 
happened a few days later. Our drinking water 
consisted of one bucketful a day; but down in 
these cold latitudes no one seemed to want to 
drink much. We kept the bucket on one of tbe 
benches that were lashed fast in front of the 
forward bunks, so as not to slide. But some¬ 
how on this particular occasion, just as the sec¬ 
ond mate stuck his head in the fo’castle door 
to call the watch—as all his men were up stow¬ 
ing the to’gansels—the bench carried away and 
shot down toward the door, striking the sill 
HOVE TO. 
with considerable force and shooting the whole 
contents of the bucket square into Mr. Stevens’ 
face. And such a swearing time as he had over 
it! But it tickled our watch immensely—that 
was one more grudge paid off against him. 
C ,G. Davis. 
Yacht Sales. 
The following sales have recently been made 
through the Hollis Burgess Yacht Agency: 
The 35ft. yawl Juanita, owned by S. C. Hunter, 
of New York, sold to J. A. Tower, of Boston. 
The 21 ft. sloop Micaboo, owned by Charles F. 
Tillinghast. of Providence, R. I., sold to Mark 
Hopkins, of Wellesley, Mass. 
