Coming on deck that Christmas morning, I rubbed my eyes before being able to take in the desolation of the scene, and make sure that I was indeed on board the _Dido_. The ship looked as if she had been storm-driven across the whole Southern Ocean, and then mopped all over with a heavy rain-squall. The wet decks, the naked spars, the two top-sails tucked up to a treble reef, and seeming mere strips of canvas, grey with damp, the raffle of gear lying about, with here and there a man over his knees in water slowly coiling it up, hanging on meanwhile by one hand, combined, with the lowering sky and leaden sea, to make up a gloomy picture indeed. The ship was nearly close-hauled, and a big lump of a head-sea on, with which she was doing her level, or rather, most unlevel, best to fill her decks fore and aft. Broad on the port bow loomed the land—great cliffs, stern and ragged—at whose base, through the thin mist that was softly drizzling, could be seen a broad white belt of broken water. ‘Cape Horn weather!’ quoth the captain at my elbow. He was swathed in oilskins, and squinting rather anxiously at the sky. ‘The glass is falling,’ he continued; ‘but there’s more southing in the wind. Might give us a slant presently through the Straits of Le Maire.’ And with that, pulling out a bit of the condenser, and looking lovingly at it, he went below. The mate was standing near, staring hard at the land. It might have been the shadow of the sou’-wester on his face, but I thought he appeared even more surly and forbidding than ever. Of course it was a holiday. During the last four hours both watches had been on deck shortening sail. After clearing up the washing raffle of ropes, and leaving a man at the wheel and another on the lookout, they were free to go into the fo’k’stle, and smoke or sleep, as they pleased. Dinner—a curious acrobatic feat that Christmas day in the _Dido’s_ cabin—over, I donned waterproofs and sea-boots, and, putting four bottles of rum in a handbag, which I slung over my shoulder, I stepped across the washboards and made for the fo’k’stle. Creeping from hold to hold along the weather bulwarks, at times up to my waist in water, I wondered how any ship could pitch as the _Dido_ was doing and yet live. One moment, looking aft, you would imagine that the man at the wheel was about to fall on your head; the next that the jibbooms were a fourth mast; whilst incessantly poured such foaming torrents over her fo’k’stle that, as I slowly approached, I seriously doubted of getting in safely with my precious freight. Luckily, the men were watching me, and a couple, running out, caught hold of my hands, roaring in my ear,— ‘Run, sir, when she lifts again!’ And, making a dash for it, we got through the doorless entrance just in time to escape another avalanche.