et was twelve years old at the time.
This is 1913. Blessings on the head of the man who invented arithmetic!
She is twenty-four. Her name is Margaret, and she is desirable.

* * * * *

There are so many things to tell about. Where and how this mad voyage,
with a mad crew, will end is beyond all surmise. But the _Elsinore_
drives on, and day by day her history is bloodily written. And while
murder is done, and while the whole floating drama moves toward the bleak
southern ocean and the icy blasts of Cape Horn, I sit in the high place
with the masters, unafraid, I am proud to say, in an ecstasy, I am proud
to say, and I murmur over and over to _myself_--_Margaret_, _a woman_;
_Margaret_, _and desirable_.

But to resume. It is the first day of June. Ten days have passed since
the pampero. When the strong back on Number Three hatch was repaired
Captain West came back on the wind, hove to, and rode out the gale. Since
then, in calm, and fog, and damp, and storm, we have won south until to-
day we are almost abreast of the Falklands. The coast of the Argentine
lies to the West, below the sea-line, and some time this morning we
crossed the fiftieth parallel of south latitude. Here begins the passage
of Cape Horn, for so it is reckoned by the navigators--fifty south in the
Atlantic to fifty south in the Pacific.

And yet all is well with us in the matter of weather. The _Elsinore_
slides along with favouring winds. Daily it grows colder. The great
cabin stove roars and is white-hot, and all the connecting doors are
open, so that the whole after region of the ship is warm and comfortable.
But on the deck the air bites, and Margaret and I wear mittens as we
promenade the poop or go for'ard along the repaired bridge to see the
chickens on the 'midship-house. The poor, wretched creatures of instinct
and climate! Behold, as they approach the southern mid-winter of the
Horn, when they have need of all their feathers, they proceed to moult,
because, forsooth, this is the summer time in the land they came from. Or
is moulting determined by the time of year they happen to be born? I
shall have to look into this. Margaret will know.

Yesterday ominous preparations were made for the passage of the Horn. All
the braces were taken from the main deck pin-rails and geared and
arranged so that they may be worked from the tops of the houses.

Thus, the fore-braces run to the top of the forecastle, the main-braces
to th