was evidently
cowed. He had always been master, and had nothing to gain and everything
to lose; whilst the other fought for honour and freedom, and under a
sense of wrong. It would not do. It was soon over. Nat gave in, not so
much beaten as cowed and mortified, and never afterwards tried to act
the bully on board.

_V.--An Adventurous Voyage Home_

By Sunday, June 19, we were in lat. 34 deg. 15' S. and long. 116 deg. 38' W.,
and bad weather prospects began to loom ahead. The days became shorter,
the sun gave less heat, the nights were so cold as to prevent our
sleeping on deck, the Magellan clouds were in sight of a clear night,
the skies looked cold and angry, and at times a long, heavy, ugly sea
set in from the southward. Being so deep and heavy, the ship dropped
into the seas, the water washing over the decks. Not yet within a
thousand miles of Cape Horn, our decks were swept by a sea not half so
high as we must expect to find there. Then came rain, sleet, snow, and
wind enough to take our breath from us. We were always getting wet
through, and our hands stiffened and numbed, so that the work aloft was
exceptionally difficult. By July 1 we were nearly up to the latitude of
Cape Horn, and the toothache with which I had been troubled for several
days had increased the size of my face, so that I found it impossible to
eat. There was no relief to be had from the impoverished medicine-chest,
and the captain refused to allow the steward to boil some rice for me.

"Tell him to eat salt junk and hard bread like the rest of them," he
said. But the mate, who was a man as well as a sailor, smuggled a pan of
rice into the galley, and told the cook to boil it for me, and not to
let the "old man" see it. Afterwards, I was ordered by the mate to stay
in my berth for two or three days.

It was not until Friday, July 22, that, having failed to make the
passage of the Straits of Magellan, we rounded the Cape, and, sighting
the island of Staten Land, stood to the northward, and ran for the
inside of the Falkland Islands. With a fine breeze we crowded on all the
canvas the ship would bear, and our "Cheerily, men," was given with a
chorus that might have been heard halfway to Staten Land. Once we were
to the northward of the Falklands, the sun rose higher in the horizon
each day, the nights grew shorter, and on coming on deck each morning
there was a sensible change in the temperature.

On the 20th of the month I stood my last