That is why, I fancy, he
is so excellent a seaman.

* * * * *

The days pass--if the interval of sombre gray that comes between the
darknesses can be called day. For a week, now, we have not seen the sun.
Our ship's position in this waste of storm and sea is conjectural. Once,
by dead reckoning, we gained up with the Horn and a hundred miles south
of it. And then came another sou'west gale that tore our fore-topsail
and brand new spencer out of the belt-ropes and swept us away to a
conjectured longitude east of Staten Island.

Oh, I know now this Great West Wind that blows for ever around the world
south of 55. And I know why the chart-makers have capitalized it, as,
for instance, when I read "The Great West Wind Drift." And I know why
the _Sailing Directions_ advise: "_Whatever you do_, _make westing_!
_make westing_!"

And the West Wind and the drift of the West Wind will not permit the
_Elsinore_ to make westing. Gale follows gale, always from the west, and
we make easting. And it is bitter cold, and each gale snorts up with a
prelude of driving snow.

In the cabin the lamps burn all day long. No more does Mr. Pike run the
phonograph, nor does Margaret ever touch the piano. She complains of
being bruised and sore. I have a wrenched shoulder from being hurled
against the wall. And both Wada and the steward are limping. Really,
the only comfort I can find is in my bunk, so wedged with boxes and
pillows that the wildest rolls cannot throw me out. There, save for my
meals and for an occasional run on deck for exercise and fresh air, I lie
and read eighteen and nineteen hours out of the twenty-four. But the
unending physical strain is very wearisome.

How it must be with the poor devils for'ard is beyond conceiving. The
forecastle has been washed out several times, and everything is soaking
wet. Besides, they have grown weaker, and two watches are required to do
what one ordinary watch could do. Thus, they must spend as many hours on
the sea-swept deck and aloft on the freezing yards as I do in my warm,
dry bunk. Wada tells me that they never undress, but turn into their wet
bunks in their oil-skins and sea-boots and wet undergarments.

To look at them crawling about on deck or in the rigging is enough. They
are truly weak. They are gaunt-cheeked and haggard-gray of skin, with
great dark circles under their eyes. The predicted plague of sea-boils
and sea-cuts has come, and their hands and wri