r to
Oakland to see Neil Partington and his wife and family, and later on up
to Benicia to see Charley Le Grant and talk over old times. No; I shall
not go to Benicia, now that I think about it. I expect to be a highly
interested party to a wedding, shortly to take place. Her name is Alice
Partington, and, since Charley has promised to be best man, he will have
to come down to Oakland instead.

[Illustration]

MAKE WESTING

_Whatever you do, make westing! make westing!_
--Sailing directions for Cape Horn.

For seven weeks the _Mary Rogers_ had been between 50 deg. south in the
Atlantic and 50 deg. south in the Pacific, which meant that for seven weeks
she had been struggling to round Cape Horn. For seven weeks she had been
either in dirt, or close to dirt, save once, and then, following upon
six days of excessive dirt, which she had ridden out under the shelter
of the redoubtable Terra Del Fuego coast, she had almost gone ashore
during a heavy swell in the dead calm that had suddenly fallen. For
seven weeks she had wrestled with the Cape Horn gray-beards, and in
return been buffeted and smashed by them. She was a wooden ship, and her
ceaseless straining had opened her seams, so that twice a day the watch
took its turn at the pumps.

The _Mary Rogers_ was strained, the crew was strained, and big Dan
Cullen, master, was likewise strained. Perhaps he was strained most of
all, for upon him rested the responsibility of that titanic struggle. He
slept most of the time in his clothes, though he rarely slept. He
haunted the deck at night, a great, burly, robust ghost, black with the
sunburn of thirty years of sea and hairy as an orang-utan. He, in turn,
was haunted by one thought of action, a sailing direction for the Horn:
_Whatever you do, make westing! make westing!_ It was an obsession. He
thought of nothing else, except, at times, to blaspheme God for sending
such bitter weather.

_Make westing!_ He hugged the Horn, and a dozen times lay hove to with
the iron Cape bearing east-by-north, or north-north-east, a score of
miles away. And each time the eternal west wind smote him back and he
made easting. He fought gale after gale, south to 64 deg., inside the
antarctic drift-ice, and pledged his immortal soul to the Powers of
Darkness for a bit of westing, for a slant to take him around. And he
made easting. In despair, he had tried to make the passage through the
Straits of Le Maire. Halfway through, the wind