Dana, Richard Henry, 1815-1882; Sailors; Seafaring life; Voyages and travels
``'Vast there, you bloody
old owl! you're always hanging out blue lights! You're frightened
by the ducking you got in the scuppers, and can't take a joke!
What's the use in being always on the lookout for Davy Jones?''
``Stand by!'' says another, ``and we'll get an afternoon watch
below, by this scrape''; but in this they were disappointed, for
at two bells all hands were called and set to work, getting
lashings upon everything on deck; and the captain talked of
sending down the long top-gallant-masts; but as the sea went down
toward night, and the wind hauled abeam, we left them standing,
and set the studding-sails.
The next day all hands were turned-to upon unbending the old
sails, and getting up the new ones; for a ship, unlike people on
shore, puts on her best suit in bad weather. The old sails were
sent down, and three new topsails, and new fore and main courses,
jib, and fore-topmast staysail, which were made on the coast and
never had been used, were bent, with a complete set of new
earings, robands, and reef-points; and reef-tackles were rove to
the courses, and spilling-lines to the topsails. These, with new
braces and clew-lines fore and aft, gave us a good suit of running
rigging.
The wind continued westerly, and the weather and sea less rough
since the day on which we shipped the heavy sea, and we were
making great progress under studding-sails, with our light sails
all set, keeping a little to the eastward of south; for the
captain, depending upon westerly winds off the Cape, had kept so
far to the westward that, though we were within about five hundred
miles of the latitude of Cape Horn, we were nearly seventeen
hundred miles to the westward of it. Through the rest of the week
we continued on with a fair wind, gradually, as we got more to the
southward, keeping a more easterly course, and bringing the wind
on our larboard quarter, until--
Sunday, June 26th, when, having a fine, clear day, the captain got
a lunar observation, as well as his meridian altitude, which made
us in lat. 47° 50' S., lon. 113° 49' W.; Cape Horn bearing,
according to my calculations, E. S. E. 1/2 E., and distant eighteen
hundred miles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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