d they follow so fast on one
another's heels that the sea never has a chance to grow calm. So long
have we rolled and tossed about that the thought, say, of a solid,
unmoving billiard-table is inconceivable. In previous incarnations I
have encountered things that did not move, but . . . they were in
previous incarnations.

We have been up to the Diego Ramirez Rocks twice in the past ten days. At
the present moment, by vague dead reckoning, we are two hundred miles
east of them. We have been hove down to our hatches three times in the
last week. We have had six stout sails, of the heaviest canvas, furled
and double-gasketed, torn loose and stripped from the yards. Sometimes,
so weak are our men, not more than half of them can respond to the call
for all hands.

Lars Jacobson, who had his leg broken early in the voyage, was knocked
down by a sea several days back and had the leg rebroken. Ditman
Olansen, the crank-eyed Norwegian, went Berserker last night in the
second dog-watch and pretty well cleaned out his half of the forecastle.
Wada reports that it required the bricklayers, Fitzgibbon and Gilder, the
Maltese Cockney, and Steve Roberts, the cowboy, finally to subdue the
madman. These are all men of Mr. Mellaire's watch. In Mr. Pike's watch
John Hackey, the San Francisco hoodlum, who has stood out against the
gangsters, has at last succumbed and joined them. And only this morning
Mr. Pike dragged Charles Davis by the scruff of the neck out of the
forecastle, where he had caught him expounding sea-law to the miserable
creatures. Mr. Mellaire, I notice on occasion, remains unduly intimate
with the gangster clique. And yet nothing serious happens.

And Charles Davis does not die. He seems actually to be gaining in
weight. He never misses a meal. From the break of the poop, in the
shelter of the weather cloth, our decks a thunder and rush of freezing
water, I often watch him slip out of his room between seas, mug and plate
in hand, and hobble for'ard to the galley for his food. He is a keen
judge of the ship's motions, for never yet have I seen him get a serious
ducking. Sometimes, of course, he may get splattered with spray or wet
to the knees, but he manages to be out of the way whenever a big
graybeard falls on board.

CHAPTER XXXVII

A wonderful event to-day! For five minutes, at noon, the sun was
actually visible. But such a sun!--a pale and cold and sickly orb that
at meridian was on