As we began to lift the Southern Cross and the trades left us, we again shifted sail, an all day job that this time fell on a Sunday, and when completed found us under our best suit of canvas ready for that storm corner of the voyage, Cape Horn. We overhauled the rudder tackles, reeving new purchases "with the sun," as indeed all purchases are rove. Oil bags were made, shaped like beech nuts, bound with ratline stuff, and fitted with a stout becket. By filling these with heavy non-freezing animal or vegetable oil and puncturing them with a sail needle, they afforded the best means for spreading oil on the waters in time of storm. One sail in particular that we bent at this time made a great impression on me; this was a heavy storm spencer made of dark hemp canvas, soft and pliable even when wet, unlike the stiff white American cotton stuff that rips out your finger nails when fighting the bellying folds, tough as sheet iron, as it slams out from a bucking yard. The main spencer was evidently an acquisition from some Asiatic or European voyage. It bent to an iron jackstay, and furled in to the mast with a set of brails, being cut "leg-o'-mutton," the sheet hauling aft to big eyebolts on either side of the waist. Double lashings were passed on all of the lifeboat gripes. Rolling and jumper tackles were got ready for the lower and tops'l yards, to relieve the stress on yards and parrals, and straps and whips were prepared, and laid aside, for use as preventer braces should the necessity arise. In these preparations on the _Fuller_ we had a foresight of what to expect when off the dreaded Cape; at the same time we were certain that no vessel was ever better or more intelligently groomed for heavy weather. These preparations carried us well down to the latitude of the River Plate; here we were warned by the wise ones to expect some weather, which was not long in coming. Our watch had just gone below at midnight, when a sou'wester zipped in from the distant land, a live whole gale, sweetened with the breath of the Patagonian prairies that stretched for leagues beneath its origin. The starboard watch started to shorten sail, but by four bells in the midwatch things were getting so far ahead of them that all hands were called, and we tumbled out in the midst of a Bedlam of thrashing gear and general confusion. Most of the port watch were ordered aloft to take in the fore upper tops'l, thrashing in its gear, while the ship plunged ahead under lower tops'ls, reefed fore course and stays'ls. The starboard watch were completing the job of furling the main tops'l, and with two of our men to help, were about to tackle the mains'l.