nothing for it but to stand on to the eastward through uncharted polar seas in the hopes of rounding Cape Horn. “Day after day they kept on, bending on new sails as fast as they were carried away; splicing and repairing rigging as it parted; half starved, numb with cold, often unable to secure a sight to learn where they were, but ever grimly heading east and north and blindly plunging into the long, green, storm-swept seas. “And at last they found they were making northing, the tempests were less severe, the weather was appreciably warmer, and they realized, with heartfelt joy, that they had rounded the Cape and actually were in the Atlantic. By the 7th of December they were well north of Cape Horn—off the mouth of Rio de la Plata, in fact—but they had sighted no land since leaving Tierra del Fuego and had not the least idea how many scores or hundreds of miles they might be from either the South American or the African coast. “Now the awful struggles the ship had undergone began to tell, and she sprang more leaks, until the men, on less than quarter rations, were compelled to toil day and night at the pumps. Yet they were cheered, for the weather was constantly becoming warmer and fairer, and though several men died from the result of frost bites and exposure, the others took heart. But it was maddening for them to see porpoises, dolphins, bonitos and sea birds about their ship and yet be unable to obtain them to eke out their perilously low supply of food. The fish would not take the hook, the birds gave them no chance to shoot, and the haggard, dull-eyed, tattered men watched with hungry eyes the bountiful supply of food quite beyond their reach. “Since leaving the tropics in the Pacific not a mouthful of meat, save a few oily penguins and a seal or two, had passed their lips. The only meat upon the ship was a sow which had been taken aboard as a suckling pig in the far-off Gulf of Nicoya, and on Christmas Day this was slaughtered for the men’s dinner. Starvation was staring them in the face, but on January 5th they captured a hundred-and-twenty-pound albicore and great was the rejoicing. Two days later they took an even larger one, and now they discovered that their water casks had sprung leaks and that only a few pannikins of the precious liquid remained. Only a quart a day was allowed to a man, and sweltering under the equatorial sun, baffled with light winds and calms, the men’s plight was pitiable. In order to keep afloat they toiled ceaselessly at the pumps, falling exhausted on the sizzling decks, cursing and moaning, crying for water, and several dying raving mad. “But now they were well north of the equator. Somewhere ahead, Ringrose felt sure, were the Caribbean isles they longed to see, and Captain Sharp offered a reward to the first man to sight land.