Often the crimps brought aboard as sailors men who had never set
foot on a vessel. On the El Dorado few were accustomed mariners,
and the first few weeks were passed in adjusting crew and officers
to one another, and to the routine of the overloaded schooner. When
they were fifteen days out they spoke a vessel, which reported them,
and after that they saw no other. The mate was a bucko, a slugger,
according to Steve, and was hated by all, for most of them during
the throes of seasickness had had a taste of his fists.

On the seventy-second day out the El Dorado was twenty-seven hundred
miles off the coast of Chile, having run a swelling semicircle to
get the benefit of the southeast trades, and being far south of
Antofagasta. That was the way of the wind, which forced a ship from
Oregon to Chile to swing far out from the coast, and make a deep
southward dip before catching the south-west trades, which would
likely stay by her to her port of discharge.

They had sailed on a Friday, and on Wednesday, the eleventh of the
third month following, their real troubles began. Steve's diary, as
interpreted by him, after the foregoing, was substantially as follows,
the color being all his:

"From the day we sailed we were at the pumps for two weeks to bale
the old tub out. Then she swelled, and the seams became tight. There
was bad weather from the time we crossed the Astoria bar. The old man
would carry on because he was in a hurry to make a good run. The mate
used to beat us, and it's a wonder we didn't kill him. We used to lie
awake in our watch below and think of what we'd do to him when we got
him ashore. All the men were sore on him. He cursed us all the time,