Part 22
On the other hand, though, owing to the uniformity of temperature produced by such a waste of ocean, Cape Horn summers are but little warmer than the winters; the difference between the lowest of July and the highest of December being only 18°, the average for the year being 42°; whereas in Canada, far away from the mellowing influence of salt-water, there is an extreme thermometrical range of 150° between the seasons. Compare Cape Horn’s winter temperature of 30° in the latitude of 56° and that of Minnesota of 55° below zero, though St. Paul is six hundred and fifty miles nearer the equator. St. Paul’s average for the year, 44°, is almost identical with that of the Horn, the intense heat of the northern summers almost exactly balancing a degree of cold not exceeded by 20° on the Arctic Ocean. Contrary to the general opinion, the most intense cold is not to be found in the far northern sea where Nansen travelled, but in Siberia. In the centre of that desolate country is a town called Irkutsk in 52° north, or fifteen degrees south of the Polar Circle, at which the lowest natural temperature ever recorded by man has been observed, the spirit thermometers once showing a temperature of 93° below zero, or 53-1/2° below the freezing point of mercury. Artificial cold, though, has far exceeded this reading, as Professor Dewar obtained a temperature of about 370° below zero in the liquefaction of oxygen. This latter figure is about as conceivable as the unit of measure of the astronomer, who adopts as his basis of calculation for celestial distances that extent of space which a ray of light would cover in a year, moving at the rate of one hundred and eighty thousand miles per second. In other words, instead of using one mile, his unit of distance is 5,676,480,000,000 miles, which is known as a light year; and he further crushes us with the information that stars of the seventeenth magnitude are thirty thousand light years away.
By this time the exhausted reader has said to himself many times, “What’s all this got to do with the Southern Ocean?” So, with apologies for such an excursion into the infinite, let us continue.
We are now kept farther away than ever from the dining-room stove by a new aggregation of garments, very different from the others, which need a little explanation. All the oil-skins in the slop-chest were used up by the men last week, and we have had to manufacture some for them. Many ships make a practice of taking to sea several suits of heavy cotton (which oil-skins are made of), but without being treated with the usual mixture of wax and oil. When, therefore, a ship’s regular stock of oil-skins has been exhausted, the captain produces some of these cotton suits and has them well rubbed with three coats of boiled linseed oil, allowing each coat to dry; the result being thoroughly water-tight, pliable garments, which will not crack, as slop-chest oil-skins have a curious habit of doing.
Around our stove for three or four days there have been suspended several of these suits, so oil-sodden that to touch one means an immense grease-spot. Nor is this the only inconvenience, for the whole interior of the cabin reeks with the stifling fumes of hot, boiled oil.
As far as we have been able to discover, there is but one article sold from a slop-chest to sailors that is worth paying for, and that is the stiff, black sou’wester. They are very comfortable, though as rigid as a fireman’s leather helmet, and are lined with heavy red flannel, with a band of the same that extends over the ears and back of the neck, to the exclusion of the most penetrating snow-squalls. The face is protected by a wide visor of the same inflexible stuff, which extends far down over the neck. As the old man remarked, “One o’ these things would stop a battle-axe.” However exaggerated this may be, though, they do most effectively preserve the cranium from the severest Cape Horn hail-squalls; you might as well tie a handkerchief over your head as to wear an ordinary yellow sou’wester in one of these squalls, as far as protection from the hail is concerned.
We now have for tea every evening a dish entirely new to us. It is a hind-quarter of pig steeped in brine for a fortnight; in other words, an unsmoked ham; and it is the sweetest, juiciest pig meat imaginable. I would rather eat it than the tenderest young sucking pig I ever tasted. Another very successful article of food on board is the soup, which is made as follows: Empty one of the large one-gallon tins of mutton (put up in a liquor like canned sausages) into a saucepan; add tinned carrots, tomatoes, rice, and barley, boil them together for about thirty minutes, season well with a very little onion, pepper, etc., and a rich, well-flavored soup will be obtained which would pass for stock soup almost anywhere ashore. It is infinitely better than the finest tinned soup. The mutton before alluded to is often purchased by ships in large quantities and given to the men, alternating with salt beef and pork; it is also much used for making meat pies for the cabin table, for which it is well suited, the resemblance to fresh mutton being remarkable. Our last pig has just been slaughtered; it seemed a pity to kill the poor beast, for he was an intelligent, quaint little fellow, very tame, and fond of being petted. Latitude, 50° 14′ south; longitude, 90° 12′ west.
+July 31+
Our breeze from west-northwest has not been very strong for the past twenty-four hours, and in addition we made two degrees of easting, which is sad. This was the first morning for a month on which we were able to eat our breakfast without lamplight, and in another week we hope to dispense with it at supper also. The weather is by no means clear yet, though, and we are now crossing the famous Roaring Forties, that belt of fierce winds lying between the parallels of forty and fifty on both sides of the equator, and clear skies cannot be expected until we are north of 40° south at least.
I expect to suffocate with suppressed hilarity before long if Mr. Goggins continues to grow more absurd. Last night I went on deck about ten o’clock and found the mate silently pacing athwartships near the wheel-house. It was raining, and his costume itself was enough to generate mirth in an owl. He was wrapped as in a sable shroud, in some one’s long black oil-skin coat, which was so much too large for him as to touch the deck, and the sleeves hung down half-way to his knees like the arms of a walrus, while his head was covered with a very old, limp sou’wester, also black, which fitted him like a skull-cap; it possessed not even an indication of a brim, so that the drizzling rain trickled down along the musty creases of his face, glistening in the wake of the binnacle-lamp. His forsaken appearance was further enhanced by a couple of yards of ancient gray rattlin-stuff that girded up the folds of his coat and prevented his tramping on it.
Without a word he ranged up alongside, and dropping his voice to a rasping whisper, as is his wont whenever he is about to reveal a startling theory, he said, mysteriously and very suddenly,--
“The human race is on the decline, sir.”
I didn’t reply, and he continued, “Where are the strappin’ big fellows, five-foot ten, five-foot eleven, and five-foot twelve, you used to see? Where are they, I say? _Gone. Gone._ And wot do ye find now? The present generation is growin’ up small and feeble, sir. They’re weak and no good. And luk at the winds; they’re changin’ too. They hain’t wot they used to be in the Atlantic; nor in the Pacific; nor off Cape Horn. The Trades is changed. Everythink’s changed. I may be a hold fool, sir, but I knows a thing or two. There’s more in my ’ead than comes out with a fine-tooth comb.”
All this with the most intense earnestness and so much stifled emotion as to render him partially unintelligible, while he snapped and jerked his long sleeves about in the most uncomfortable manner.
Then he abruptly changed the thread of discourse and began, “You talk about seas comin’ aboard, but you ought to been with me once when I was mate o’ the ‘Commodore.’ ’Twas in the Santa Barbara Channel, and blowin’ a whole gale o’ wind. We were runnin’, but bime by the old man thought he’d heave her to. So we put the hellum down, and as she was comin’ up, be gar’s sakes, sir, she shipped a sea that I thought was goin’ to take the hatches off. ‘You’d better jump below and call the second mate,’ said the cap’n; so I slipped down the after-companion-way into the cabin, where the old man’s eight-year-hold son was jockeyin’ a sofy that had fetched away, and says he, ‘Dad’s a-givin’ of ’er ’ell, ain’t he?’ he says. Well, I called the second mate, and then the cap’n says to us, ‘Go down and cut the lashin’s o’ that ere water-cask by the after-hatch; she’ll wipe the houses off if she don’t free herself.’ ’Twas a funny thing to do, but he was cap’n; so we crawled down on the main-deck where the watch was knockin’ about and cut the barrel adrift. In less nor five seconds it went through the rail, and in a minute there warn’t a capful o’ water on deck. It cost about ten feet o’ the port bulwarks, but ’twas our only chance.”
Now that we are well up past the rigors of Cape Horn, it actually seems as though we were close to San Francisco, while five thousand miles of latitude remain and fully fifty degrees of longitude, as ships are forced well out into the Pacific by the northeast Trades. Latitude, 48° 30′ south; longitude, 88° 25′ west.
+August 1+
Oh, how divinely beautiful and grand the dark-blue floor of heaven is after four weeks of hard gales, leaden, lowering clouds, and gray, clammy mists! To-day for the first time the sun shone with dazzling splendor, and although the altitude at meridian was only 26° 51′, we agreed that never before in our lives had we known a day of equal magnificence. And, even making allowance for our enthusiasm, the weather was well-nigh perfect. Between sunrise and dusk not the smallest cloud blurred the blue sky, which was reflected in a sea of dazzling crests, whose valleys partook of that dark, superb, velvety blue which is seen only where the ocean-bed sinks to immense depths, and which Mark Twain says looks solid enough to walk upon. A sparkling breeze whistled out of the west as exhilarating as pure oxygen, giving us a speed for the twenty-four hours of nine knots. That blighting, killing chill has vanished and one’s ears no longer tingle on exposure; and at noon we enjoyed a temperature of 50°, a rise of twenty degrees from the lowest. What a change in six days from 60° south, 76° west, to 45° south, 88° west! Pretty good work that, in less than a week; it is so much better than the average that it seems incredible. We cannot believe that in so short a time we have been blown across what ought to have been the worst part of the entire voyage. It was all the work of the east wind.
Just now there is a long, deep roll coming in from the southwest, and I am earnestly looking for some of those immense waves for which the South Pacific is famous. According to sailors, they usually occur two or three days after new and full moon; and as we had a new moon last night, perhaps we will see some of these rollers. This reminds me, however, that scientists have determined, after protracted observations, that the moon’s phases have no influence at all on the weather. Sailors often say during a spell of bad weather, “Well, there’s a change in the moon to-night; we’ll have a fine day to-morrow”; and if chance supports their remark, heaven couldn’t shake their belief.
This heavy sea that is met with here is generally not at all ugly; only a deep heave-up from the southward, often without wind, and is said to be one of the most impressive of all oceanic phenomena. The South Atlantic as well as the Pacific is also visited periodically by immense seas during calm weather. At St. Helena and Ascension they are called “rollers,” while at Fernando de Noronha and on the West African coast they are known by the Portuguese name of “calemmas.” They seem to occur chiefly in January, and, strange to say, they invariably came from the northwest. The quotation that follows is from the pen of Captain S. P. Oliver, who visited St. Helena in 1881 in one of the Union steamers:
“These rollers set in from the northwest on Thursday, January 13, with unusual severity, but lulled somewhat on the following day, Friday, only to recur with abnormal force on Saturday, attaining their maximum strength on Saturday night, so that the spectacle on Sunday morning was grand and magnificent, while the weather was bright and calm. It was surprising to see the spray of these deep ocean waves hurled by sheer force, for there was no wind, like fountains over the huge cliffs of Goat Pound Ridge and Horse Pasture, which rise perpendicularly seven hundred feet sheer out of the sea. The force of these enormous billows was spent by Sunday night, and gradually subsided into the normal calm on Monday morning.”
At our present rate of sailing a fortnight would see us on the equator, but if we cross it in three weeks it will be fine work. What sort of luck are we going to have between these westerly winds and the southeast Trades? That is one of the crucial points of the voyage that remain, another being, how far south will the northeast Trades blow?
We had a little excitement to-day at dinner. Ever since our cabin fire has been going, it has been the custom of the steward to put a can of whatever vegetable we were to have that day for dinner upon the top of the stove to heat; the proper way, of course, is to place the can in a dish of water and that in turn upon the stove or what not. To-day it was a tin of string-beans, and the steward, fully an hour before dinner, put the can upon the stove, which was nearly red-hot. (The warmer the day the hotter the fire, here as elsewhere.) When the soup had been cleared away, the gentle, timid little Malay took the tin into the pantry and attacked it with a can-opener. But no sooner was the metal pierced than the whole pantry was filled with a suffocating steam that rushed hissing out of the vent with the most astonishing fury. We sat aghast. The old man cursed a little and the mate got up, but instantly thought better of it and sat down again. And still the steam came belching out of the can, which had fallen down and was shooting about the pantry like a demented steam-cylinder, while we could dimly perceive the slender form of the little steward through the pungent vapory clouds making courageous efforts to lay hold of the bewitched bean-can. For nearly a minute steam continued to escape with such force that it almost shrieked; and had the tin remained another five minutes on the stove it must certainly have exploded and scattered boiling water, beans, and jagged fragments of tin and lead about the room.
Last evening at supper a bottle of Apollinaris burst in my hand with a loud report as I was opening it, scaring the valiant Goggins into upsetting a full cup of tea upon a clean cloth, for which the old man fixed him with his eye and held him thus for quite half a minute during an awful silence.
If only for the sake of the sailors we are anxious to get into warm weather again as soon as possible. Now that they have removed the mufflers, etc., from their necks and heads, we can see how pale and washed out most of them are. There are only two among them who do not bear ocular proof of the hardships of a month in the Southern Ocean in July. Paddy is perhaps the worst looking of the whole crew, though he cannot be thirty years of age. This is due probably to his never, under any circumstances, shirking his work, and to his exerting himself more than any one else in the ship. Indeed, he was so full of nerve and energy in the worst weather, that the captain surprised us once by saying, pointing to Paddy on a yard-arm in a heavy squall, “There’s what I call a brave man; he doesn’t know what fear is.” The skipper didn’t mean to insinuate that Paddy was courageous for going out on the yard at that moment; he was thinking about his general conduct.
Poor Paddy’s arms from wrist to elbow are perfect mountain-chains of sea-boils, and he looks as ghastly and pallid as a corpse, with pointed nose and staring eyes; his entire appearance has changed. It may be interesting to add that the majority of foremast hands do not live to be forty-three years old.
I forgot to say that for the first time in five weeks the mate shaved for dinner to-day, and so sleek and blue and shiny and naked did it make him look, that it was almost a shock when he sat down opposite us. Latitude, 45° 2′ south; longitude, 87° 40′ west.
+August 2+
This day was even finer than yesterday, except that since ten this forenoon we haven’t had much wind. But the weather is warmer, 48° at 8 +A.M.+, and the sea is as placid and still and clear as under the line. All the ground-swell has disappeared, and the great, level expanse of the mighty South Pacific stretches on all sides in tiny crinkles, frosted here and there by a crisp sparkle of froth; and the sea-rim bounds the view in a circle as sharp and black as ink. It was a day of almost tropic beauty, save that the air lacked the ineffable balm characteristic of a day at sea between Cancer and Capricorn. We rejoice at seeing the sky-sails once more expanded to the breeze, for to-day the three yards were crossed, giving to the ship a fine-weather look. Juan Fernandez will soon be abeam, and then only a few degrees more to the Trades, for we made three and a half degrees of latitude yesterday and hardly any easting. How pleasant it is to think of the approach of warm weather again, when we can lie in deck-chairs in the shadow of the wheel-house with a good book, or pass away the hours with a backgammon- or cribbage-board!
We are very much pleased to find how free this ship is from roaches that usually abound in sailing vessels; the only member of that objectionable family that we have yet perceived was a small red one; of the large, black cockroaches we have not seen one, though on the “Mandalore” we were told that they were numerous on all wooden ships. Neither have we discovered any of the more villanous creatures, which cannot be said of many transatlantic mail steamers.
A fact worthy of note, as deplorable as it was unexpected, is that since passing the meridian of Cape Horn we have not seen a single albatross. Indeed, during the whole passage we haven’t seen more than a dozen of them, they having been most numerous between the river Plate and Staten Land. In truth, the albatross seems to be disappearing, which is not astonishing when it is considered that many ship-masters either use them as rifle-targets or catch them by the half-dozen with hook and line, and take the quills and down home to sweethearts and wives. Is it not odd, by the way, that there are more benedicts among sea-captains than are to be found among the men of any other profession? Yet long-voyage skippers, who are invariably married men, see their wives only once a year.
Perhaps the albatross has been driven away into regions even more solitary than Cape Horn, but it is my belief that they are gradually vanishing, which is to be much lamented. They are of no apparent use to mankind, but neither is the tiger; yet if that royal beast were upon the eve of extermination, as our bison is, there would be a great wailing heard in the land. The albatross, be it said, has all the regal dignity of the bison; and no one who has not seen it can imagine the imperial flight of a full-grown wanderer. Latitude, 41° 35′ south; longitude, 86° 56′ west.
+August 3+
Pleasant northerly breezes, a smooth sea, and brilliant sunshine gladdened our hearts this morning, and at noon we found ourselves well north of 40°. The wind hauled to the northward somewhat during the night, though, so that, with the variation, we did not make good a better course than northeast by north, and are now heading for Juan Fernandez in 34° south.