a, while, in the end, it is found to be the
shortest track, as westerly winds are never wanting afterward by which
to reach the Cape. It was Captain Guy's intention to make his first
stoppage at Kerguelen's Land--I hardly know for what reason. On the
day we were picked up the schooner was off Cape St. Roque, in longitude
thirty-one degrees west; so that, when found, we had drifted probably,
from north to south, _not less than five-and-twenty degrees!_

On board the Jane Guy we were treated with all the kindness our
distressed situation demanded. In about a fortnight, during which time
we continued steering to the southeast, with gentle breezes and fine
weather, both Peters and myself recovered entirely from the effects of
our late privation and dreadful sufferings, and we began to remember
what had passed rather as a frightful dream from which we had been
happily awakened, than as events which had taken place in sober and
naked reality. I have since found that this species of partial oblivion
is usually brought about by sudden transition, whether from joy
to sorrow or from sorrow to joy--the degree of forgetfulness being
proportioned to the degree of difference in the exchange. Thus, in my
own case, I now feel it impossible to realize the full extent of
the misery which I endured during the days spent upon the hulk. The
incidents are remembered, but not the feelings which the incidents
elicited at the time of their occurrence. I only know, that when they
did occur, I then thought human nature could sustain nothing more of
agony.

We continued our voyage for some weeks without any incidents of
greater moment than the occasional meeting with whaling-ships, and more
frequently with the black or right whale, so called in contradistinction
to the spermaceti. These, however, were chiefly found south of the
twenty-fifth parallel. On the sixteenth of September, being in the
vicinity of the Cape of Good Hope, the schooner encountered her first
gale of any violence since leaving Liverpool. In this neighborhood, but
more frequently to the south and east of the promontory (we were to
the westward), navigators have often to contend with storms from the
northward, which rage with great fury. They always bring with them a
heavy sea, and one of their most dangerous features is the instantaneous
chopping round of the wind, an occurrence almost certain to take place
during the greatest force of the gale. A perfect hurricane will be
blo