He turned upon me in a rage, as if I had insulted him, and positively
snarled in my face ere he swung away without the courtesy of an
answer. It is evident that he takes the sea seriously. That is why,
I fancy, he is so excellent a seaman.


The days pass--if the interval of sombre gray that comes between the
darknesses can be called day. For a week, now, we have not seen the
sun. Our ship's position in this waste of storm and sea is
conjectural. Once, by dead reckoning, we gained up with the Horn and
a hundred miles south of it. And then came another sou'west gale
that tore our f ore-topsail and brand new spencer out of the belt-
ropes and swept us away to a conjectured longitude east of Staten
Island.

Oh, I know now this Great West Wind that blows for ever around the
world south of 55. And I know why the chart-makers have capitalized
it, as, for instance, when I read "The Great West Wind Drift." And I
know why the Sailing Directions advise: "WHATEVER YOU DO, MAKE
WESTING! MAKE WESTING!"

And the West Wind and the drift of the West Wind will not permit the
Elsinore to make westing. Gale follows gale, always from the west,
and we make easting. And it is bitter cold, and each gale snorts up
with a prelude of driving snow.

In the cabin the lamps burn all day long. No more does Mr. Pike run
the phonograph, nor does Margaret ever touch the piano. She
complains of being bruised and sore. I have a wrenched shoulder from
being hurled against the wall. And both Wada and the steward are