et when I called Pitt I
talked to him about it as though we must certainly be run down if he did
not keep a sharp look-out, and when my watch below came round at four
o'clock, I was so agitated that I was up and down till daybreak, as
though my duty did not end till then.

The gale moderated at sunrise, and, though it was a gloomy, true Cape
Horn morning, with dark driving clouds, the sea a dusky olive, very
hollow, and frequent small quick squalls of sleet which brought the wind
to us in sharp guns, yet as we could see where we were going, I got the
schooner before it, heading her east-north-east, and under a reefed
topsail, mainsail, and staysail, the old bucket stormed through it with
the sputter and rage of a line-of-battle ship. There was a log-reel and
line on deck, and I found a sand-glass in the chest in my cabin in which
I had met with the quadrants, perspective glass, and the like, and I
kept this log regularly going, marking a point of departure on the chart
the American captain had given me, which I afterwards found to be within
two leagues and a half of the true position. But for three days the
weather continued so heavy that there was nothing to be done in the
shape of gratifying the men's expectations by overhauling what was left
of the cargo. Indeed, we had no leisure for such work; all our waking
hours had to be strictly dedicated to the schooner, and in keeping a
look-out for ice. But the morning of the fourth day broke with a fine
sky and a brisk breeze from a little to the east of south, to which we
showed every cloth the schooner had to throw abroad, and being now by
dead reckoning within a few leagues of the meridian of sixty degrees, I
shaped a course north by east by my compass, with the design of getting
a view of Staten Island that I might correct my calculations.

When we had made sail and got our breakfast, I told Wilkinson and
Cromwell (Pitt being at the tiller) that now was a good opportunity for
inspecting the contents of the hold; and (not to be tedious in this part
of my relation, however I may have sinned in this respect elsewhere) we
carried lanthorns below, and spent the better part of the forenoon in
taking stock. From a copy of the memorandum I made on that occasion
(still in my possession), we discovered that the Yankee captain had left
us the following: thirty casks of rum, twenty-eight hogsheads of claret,
seventy-five casks of brandy, fifty of sherry, and eighteen cases of
beer