thirteenth day of April, and for the seventh and last
time, she weighed anchor from that port. Difficulties, however,
multiplied all about in so strange a manner that had I been given to
superstitious fears I should not have persisted in sailing on a
thirteenth day, notwithstanding that a fair wind blew in the offing.
Many of the incidents were ludicrous. When I found myself, for
instance, disentangling the sloop's mast from the branches of a tree
after she had drifted three times around a small island, against my
will, it seemed more than one's nerves could bear, and I had to speak
about it, so I thought, or die of lockjaw, and I apostrophized the
_Spray_ as an impatient farmer might his horse or his ox. "Didn't you
know," cried I--"didn't you know that you couldn't climb a tree!" But
the poor old _Spray_ had essayed, and successfully too, nearly
everything else in the Strait of Magellan, and my heart softened
toward her when I thought of what she had gone through. Moreover, she
had discovered an island. On the charts this one that she had sailed
around was traced as a point of land. I named it Alan Erric Island,
after a worthy literary friend whom I had met in strange by-places,
and I put up a sign, "Keep off the grass," which, as discoverer, was
within my rights.

Now at last the _Spray_ carried me free of Tierra del Fuego. If by a
close shave only, still she carried me clear, though her boom actually
hit the beacon rocks to leeward as she lugged on sail to clear the
point. The thing was done on the 13th of April, 1896. But a close
shave and a narrow escape were nothing new to the _Spray_.

The waves doffed their white caps beautifully to her in the strait
that day before the southeast wind, the first true winter breeze of
the season from that quarter, and here she was out on the first of it,
with every prospect of clearing Cape Pillar before it should shift. So
it turned out; the wind blew hard, as it always blows about Cape Horn,
but she had cleared the great tide-race off Cape Pillar and the
Evangelistas, the outermost rocks of all, before the change came. I
remained at the helm, humoring my vessel in the cross seas, for it was
rough, and I did not dare to let her take a straight course. It was
necessary to change her course in the combing seas, to meet them with
what skill I could when they rolled up ahead, and to keep off when
they came up abeam.

On the following morning, April 14, only the tops of the highe