But we sailed on, and no signals were seen. Mr. Pike was delighted with our good fortune. He was guilty of walking up and down, rubbing his hands and chuckling to himself. Not since 1888, he told me, had he been through the Straits of Le Maire. Also, he said that he knew of shipmasters who had made forty voyages around the Horn and had never once had the luck to win through the straits. The regular passage is far to the east around Staten Island, which means a loss of westing, and here, at the tip of the world, where the great west wind, unobstructed by any land, sweeps round and around the narrow girth of earth, westing is the thing that has to be fought for mile by mile and inch by inch. The Sailing Directions advise masters on the Horn passage: _Make Westing_. _Whatever you do_, _make westing_. When we emerged from the straits in the early afternoon the same steady breeze continued, and in the calm water under the lee of Tierra del Fuego, which extends south-westerly to the Horn, we slipped along at an eight-knot clip. Mr. Pike was beside himself. He could scarcely tear himself from the deck when it was his watch below. He chuckled, rubbed his hands, and incessantly hummed snatches from the Twelfth Mass. Also, he was voluble. “To-morrow morning we’ll be up with the Horn. We’ll shave it by a dozen or fifteen miles. Think of it! We’ll just steal around! I never had such luck, and never expected to. Old girl _Elsinore_, you’re rotten for’ard, but the hand of God is at your helm.” Once, under the weather cloth, I came upon him talking to himself. It was more a prayer. “If only she don’t pipe up,” he kept repeating. “If only she don’t pipe up.” Mr. Mellaire was quite different. “It never happens,” he told me. “No ship ever went around like this. You watch her come. She always comes a-smoking out of the sou’west.” “But can’t a vessel ever steal around?” I asked. “The odds are mighty big against it, sir,” he answered. “I’ll give you a line on them. I’ll wager even, sir, just a nominal bet of a pound of tobacco, that inside twenty-four hours we’ll be hove to under upper-topsails. I’ll wager ten pounds to five that we’re not west of the Horn a week from now; and, fifty to fifty being the passage, twenty pounds to five that two weeks from now we’re not up with fifty in the Pacific.” As for Captain West, the perils of Le Maire behind, he sat below, his slippered feet stretched before him, smoking a cigar. He had nothing to say whatever, although Margaret and I were jubilant and dared duets through all of the second dog-watch. * * * * * And this morning, in a smooth sea and gentle breeze, the Horn bore almost due north of us not more than six miles away. Here we were, well abreast and reeling off westing. “What price tobacco this morning?” I quizzed Mr. Mellaire. “Going up,” he came back. “Wish I had a thousand bets like the one with you, sir.”