When the final clatter had calmed down like the distant mumblings of a thunder-storm, the steward protruded his scared face around the angle of the doorway, and, urged by the saw-like voice of the skipper, who had now flown into a passion, and was standing at the threshold, began to slowly gather up the fragments of our once succulent repast. We contrived to fare pretty well, though, by scraping off the tongue and opening a tin of pease and tomatoes; and we would have treated the whole affair as a joke had it not been for the old man’s temper. He was thoroughly angry, and when I observed that on the “Mandalore” we had racks four inches high instead of two, and that we broke not a dish or a cup during the passage, he almost suffocated, and after glaring at us a moment, leaning against the mizzen-mast at the head of the table, he snarled, “I druther set right down and eat offen the floor than have sech things on the table.” Indeed, he has been in a violent mood all day at the light weather, and a growl is all that he has vouchsafed by way of an answer. After dinner he went prowling about forward looking for a row, and when he couldn’t find one, he came back and threw half a plank down the lazarette hatch at the poor, mewing, deserted alley-cat which he keeps shuts up in the gloom of that dusky cavern. Latitude, 60° 10′ south; longitude, 76° 20′ west. +July 27+ Wind east, force 6; course, northwest, half west, true; distance run in the last sixty minutes, ten knots! Glorious work; it is the fastest that we have gone through the water in several weeks; for the last time that we flew along at this speed was off the coast of Patagonia, with a west-northwest gale over the quarter. The grand easterly wind did not reach us until the morning watch, however, so that the whole day’s run was not so great as the heading of this day’s log would indicate. Yesterday, from 4 to 8 +P.M.+, we lounged about in an almost perfect calm; and the stars came out of a clear, placid sky, and, quivering and trembling, peered down upon an ocean nearly motionless, for nothing but the ghost of the southwest swell remained. At the present moment even the last vestige of it has vanished under the influence of the east wind, and the sea is silent and undisturbed save for the ruffling caused by the fast-freshening breeze. Strange weather for 60° south, only four hundred and fifty miles from the South Polar Circle, in a locality world-famous for its seas and storms. Sometimes, as in our case, enormous seas are encountered in sight of Cape Horn itself; but usually the largest are seen to the westward of the Diego Ramirez, where the sea sinks again to great depths. This easterly wind is quite surprising to us also; for, barring one day of southeasterly winds when we first spoke the French ship, four weeks ago, we have had almost continuous westerly gales. Even for Cape Horn a month of such implacable winds is a bad record, for on an average an easterly