earth, westing is the
thing that has to be fought for mile by mile and inch by inch. The
Sailing Directions advise masters on the Horn passage: _Make Westing_.
_Whatever you do_, _make westing_.

When we emerged from the straits in the early afternoon the same steady
breeze continued, and in the calm water under the lee of Tierra del
Fuego, which extends south-westerly to the Horn, we slipped along at an
eight-knot clip.

Mr. Pike was beside himself. He could scarcely tear himself from the
deck when it was his watch below. He chuckled, rubbed his hands, and
incessantly hummed snatches from the Twelfth Mass. Also, he was voluble.

"To-morrow morning we'll be up with the Horn. We'll shave it by a dozen
or fifteen miles. Think of it! We'll just steal around! I never had
such luck, and never expected to. Old girl _Elsinore_, you're rotten
for'ard, but the hand of God is at your helm."

Once, under the weather cloth, I came upon him talking to himself. It
was more a prayer.

"If only she don't pipe up," he kept repeating. "If only she don't pipe
up."

Mr. Mellaire was quite different.

"It never happens," he told me. "No ship ever went around like this. You
watch her come. She always comes a-smoking out of the sou'west."

"But can't a vessel ever steal around?" I asked.

"The odds are mighty big against it, sir," he answered. "I'll give you a
line on them. I'll wager even, sir, just a nominal bet of a pound of
tobacco, that inside twenty-four hours we'll he hove to under
upper-topsails. I'll wager ten pounds to five that we're not west of the
Horn a week from now; and, fifty to fifty being the passage, twenty
pounds to five that two weeks from now we're not up with fifty in the
Pacific."

As for Captain West, the perils of Le Maire behind, he sat below, his
slippered feet stretched before him, smoking a cigar. He had nothing to
say whatever, although Margaret and I were jubilant and dared duets
through all of the second dog-watch.

* * * * *

And this morning, in a smooth sea and gentle breeze, the Horn bore almost
due north of us not more than six miles away. Here we were, well abreast
and reeling off westing.

"What price tobacco this morning?" I quizzed Mr. Mellaire.

"Going up," he came back. "Wish I had a thousand bets like the one with
you, sir."

I glanced about at sea and sky and gauged the speed of our way by the
foam, but failed to see anything that warranted his remark. It