April ii, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
569 
their length. They are allies of the mackerel, 
which they resemble a good deal in general ap¬ 
pearance. Both bonitos and dolphins attain large 
size. 
When the weather is fine, the winds light, one 
may look for sharks. The tops of their dorsal 
fins are seen at times above the surface, and per¬ 
haps one will loaf along in the vessel’s wake. 
Very likely they are scavengers by nature, for 
ordinarily they are sluggish brutes, and take any 
bait without discrimination or caution. A piece 
of salt pork is good to catch them with. When 
hooked they put up a savage fight. 1 remember 
a good-sized one that was hooked and hauled 
aboard once in the Pacific. Over the side with 
it came a little gray sucking fish with strange 
flattened head, whereby it had been clinging to 
some part of the shark's broad exterior. We cut 
steaks from this shark, cooked and ate them, but 
though the meat was as beautiful and white as 
could be, it did not make a very palatable dish. 
Perhaps if the shark had been a small one it 
would have been better to eat. 
For a time our ship lay becalmed, waiting, be¬ 
tween the westerlvs and the trade winds, then 
the northeast trades came fresh and strong, and 
we began to cut down our latitude quickly, 
“jamming the wind” now, sailing as close to it 
as possible, and still keep her sails full. The 
northeast trades swung round into the south¬ 
west monsoons, and we were south of the heat 
equator, though still north of the geographical 
equator. These monsoons are really continua¬ 
tions of the southeast trades, which, you will re¬ 
member, come toward the equator, the east in 
them from the earth’s rotation. Now as soon as 
they cross the equator the rotation throws them 
the other way, and instead of from the southeast, 
they blow from the southwest. The draft is of 
course from cooler regions toward the heat 
equator, which, at the close of summer has fol¬ 
lowed the sun far north of the geographical one. 
For a short time in the southwest monsoons, 
the wind was fair, an oasis in a desert. For the 
most part we were jamming the wind continu¬ 
ously for days and days, with our sails just 
atrcmble at the critical points. Put the ship's 
head a little nearer the wind and they would 
have been flapping in it. So we sailed on till the 
monsoons changed to the southeast trades and 
we crossed the line, as the sailors call the equa¬ 
tor, far to the eastward. Then the fight began, 
to go south and at the same time keep our dis¬ 
tance from the east coast of South America. We 
sailed along parallel with the coast, but coming 
closer and closer to it, hoping up to the last 
minute that the wind would shift a bit and let 
us slip by. For to stand to sea on the starboard 
tack and sail in a direction we did not wish to 
go, meant great loss of time. It was no use. 
September 11, four days south of the equator 
and a month and four days out from port, land 
was sighted again. 
I had gone aloft, thinking to get a view of the 
shore, and scrambled tip to where 1 could put my 
hand on the main truck, the highest point of the 
ship, but could see nothing, and, not being a 
sailor, climbed down again to a slightly less 
lofty position that did not give the same ten¬ 
dency to nervousness. Now a sharp, white point 
caught my eye, breaking the curve of the west¬ 
ern horizon. It must have been one of the build¬ 
ings ashore. We were soon to sec many more of 
them, and tall palm trees, and we stood in and 
in till there were little fishing boats, sailing cata¬ 
marans, outside of us, and looking down into 
the shoaling water its color had changed to a 
bright light blue, and the one or two darly cloud 
shadows lying toward the shore suggested 
shoals. It was a positive relief when the skipper 
gave the word and the ship went around again 
and stood out for deep water. 
This was our first real rebuff. The second one 
came as a sharp southwest squall one evening 
about a week later, and marked the transition 
from good weather to bad. For we sailed from 
home in the summer time, when pleasant weather 
reigned over the North Atlantic, and experienced 
no cold or high winds until the higher latitudes 
of the Southern Hemisphere. This was a little 
north of Rio, and from now on we must look 
out for heavy westerly weather. The first of Oc¬ 
tober, south of the River Plata, came foul 
weather indeed! It started with our ship well to 
windward and in shore, although not within 
sight of land. Science does not believe in good 
moons and bad moons, but there were many in 
that ship who did, and who called the new moon 
which came at about this time, a bad moon, even 
though the weather which ushered it in was 
pleasant enough; it did not have the proper 
slant to it. Whether mere coincidence or not, 
probably we were about due to get bad weather 
now anyway, the bad weather certainly arrived. 
First a northeasterly rain, then a lull, then the 
wind southwest, and for ten long days shortened 
sail and being blown to leeward. Slowly, slowly 
the barometer rose, while the gales swept from 
the southwest and the great round-headed cumu¬ 
lus clouds crept across the sky with squalls of 
white hail in their skirts, hail like snow, but 
which bounced against the decks and rattled 
viciously on oil-skins and sou’westers. Then, 
when the glass had reached a point where good 
weather might have been looked for, things 
moderated, the wind became more northerly, 
down dropped the barometer again like lead, 
there came a spat of rain, and the same old 
weather on us again out of the west or south¬ 
west. The best course possible was southeasterly. 
Far off shore we were driven, till finally north 
and east of Falkland Islands. Then the weathcr 
let up. It was time that it did, for to go around 
south of Falklands would be a task. It is hard 
enough to get by Cape Horn anyway, against 
the current setting from the west, and to go out¬ 
side of the Falkland Islands would necessitate 
stemming this current for a much greater dis 
tance. We were fortunate in the siege of 
weather experienced, to have had to reckon with 
no hostile current. Sometimes vessels get dis¬ 
couraged and up-helm for the Cape of Good 
Hope. 
So the ship was sailing along about her busi¬ 
ness once more. The captain called me in the 
early morning to sec icebergs, one on the hori¬ 
zon to windward, another on the horizon to lee¬ 
ward. Tt was very unusual to see them, and 
though he had been sailing round the Horn for 
many years, this was the first time he had done 
so, though once when standing far south he had 
sighted field ice, and promptly gone around on 
to the other tack to stand north again. It was at 
first supposed these icebergs were strays, and 
that no more would be seen, but more and ntoi e 
of them loomed up. and finally they became so 
thick we went around on to the other tack to get 
away from them Even so they were around us 
all day. The wind had freshened again and we 
were carrying sail and endeavoring to get clear. 
It had threatened to blow and be nasty, but for¬ 
tunately cleared up into a beautiful day. At sun¬ 
set there were only two or three bergs nearby, 
next morning none in sight. Probably nobody on 
that ship will forget those huge, steep-sided, 
flat-topped islands of Antarctic ice, white as 
snow in the sun, so serene and motionless de¬ 
spite the swell licking at their bases. Some were 
more jagged and irregular in outline, and seemed 
smaller. Perhaps they had been large and flat 
topped until, becoming eaten by the water, they 
turned bottom up. Then there were smaller 
chunks of ice that ducked in the swell, but would 
have been unpleasant enough for an iron ship to 
run upon. Altogether it was fortunate that we 
did not get among such company in the heavy 
weather that preceded or the days of fog and 
light winds that followed, while the ship, between 
the Falkland Islands and South America, ap¬ 
proached the Strait of Le Maire. 
It is considered a great gain when possible to 
go through this strait, instead of around the 
east end of Staten Land. Not only is the route 
more direct, but thereby the adverse Cape Horn 
current is avoided for those forty miles, the 
east-west extension of the island. However, the 
strait is so narrow that it is only in clear 
weather and with a favoring wind that its pass¬ 
age can be attempted. The fog cleared away, we 
sighted land again, and sailed into the strait be¬ 
tween the " rugged snow-flecked mountains. But 
to get through was not as easy as it had ap¬ 
peared. Our ship drove through the water fa¬ 
mously, but the shore held even- with her, and 
the seas stood up short and steep and frothy, 
and slopped over on to her deck, like a tide-rip 
in Long Island Sound on a larger scale. An¬ 
other vessel appeared far astern but had no such 
current dragging her back, and rapidly picked 
up on 11s. Such were the conditions when I 
turned in that night and heard the water sliding 
by our bottom outside. In the morning we were 
through the strait and far beyond. The tide must 
have changed after a while. 
They say good weather off the River Plata 
means bad weather when you get to the Horn 
and vice versa. This voyage certainly bore out 
the theory. Light and moderate breezes lasted 
to right under the Horn. Then a short, hard gale 
caught us very suddenly and made some lively 
work taking in sail. This was followed by a 
thick, rainy, northeasterly wind, and we ran by 
the Diego Ramires Islands. In the morning at 
breakfast the skipper remarked that to surely 
avoid them he would have to go some miles 
north or south of the course he was steering. A 
northeasterly wind off Cape Horn was too rare 
and valuable to spend in any such manner, so 
he let her go to the westward and kept a sharp 
lookout for land, nervous work for a little while 
when we sighted the islands. There were so 
many and they spread out so. Could it be that 
we had missed our bearings, and were running 
in coastwise. Then we were by; and every hour 
the wind held so, put us miles further to the 
westward, to windward, into the teeth of the 
Cape Florn current, on a quick passage of the 
Horn, fourteen days from 50 degrees south on 
the east side, to 50 degrees south on the west 
side. And soon we were cutting down our lati¬ 
tude again, sailing toward fine weather and 
trades. 
