Late yesterday afternoon the sun astonished us by bursting out in glorious splendor, and for the two remaining hours of daylight we sailed along parallel with the land distant only eight miles, in plain view of the Three Brothers, past Cape St. Vincent and Thetis Bay. Truly, the days are none too long now, for the sun rises at 8.30 and sets at 3.30, so that on dark days--and there are plenty of them here now--we have not more than six hours of what can be called daylight. Last night was very fine, too, with an almost full moon soaring through a cloudless sky. Throughout the earlier part of the evening we continued to hold an easterly course, for the captain wanted to have a look at the Straits of Le Maire to consider the chances of going through at daybreak. Some little time after we had finished supper, about seven o’clock, I think, we caught sight of the huge, snow-bound cliffs of Cape San Diego, the southeasternmost extremity of Tierra del Fuego, lying calm and cold in the white moonlight, and a little later we opened out the clear water of the Le Maire Straits. Then we saw outside a thick bank of woolly cloud low down in the southwest, and the skipper concluded that he wouldn’t risk going through the next day, as that bank was the infallible indicator of a heavy blow. Added to this, too, was the long, heaving swell of the Southern Ocean piling in through the fourteen miles of open water in the straits, so we wore round and stood to the northward again. It was very pleasant last night on deck, for though it was blowing hard the lee side of the wheel-house made a delightfully snug retreat, and, enveloped in mountains of rugs and shawls, we sat there in the deck-chairs till nearly eleven, discussing the voyage and enjoying the clear, soft moonlight. We awoke this morning to the howling of the wind and Captain Scruggs’s voice raised in furious anger, the helmsman sustaining the full shock of the vocal hurricane. It was the unhappy Brün, who throughout the voyage has suffered more than any one else from the temper and violence of both captain and mates. “Hey you, what the blank’s the matter with yer? Put yer wheel hard down there and let her come up to the wind. The other way, the other way. Don’t yer know the difference yet between up and down, eh? What the blank did yer come to sea for anyway? You’re a haymaker, that’s what you are. Look at the ship now; d’ye want to get her aback? Hard up yer wheel; hard up, you blank-blanked farmer’s hound! How yer headin’ now?”