ant to eat, such as it is, but it is
the cold and wet, the terrible condition of the forecastle, the lack of
sleep, and the almost continuous toil of both watches on deck. Either
watch is so weak and worthless that any severe task requires the
assistance of the other watch. As an instance, we finally managed a reef
in the foresail in the thick of a gale. It took both watches two hours,
yet Mr. Pike tells me that under similar circumstances, with an average
crew of the old days, he has seen a single watch reef the foresail in
twenty minutes.

I have learned one of the prime virtues of a steel sailing-ship. Such a
craft, heavily laden, does not strain her seams open in bad weather and
big seas. Except for a tiny leak down in the fore-peak, with which we
sailed from Baltimore and which is bailed out with a pail once in several
weeks, the _Elsinore_ is bone-dry. Mr. Pike tells me that had a wooden
ship of her size and cargo gone through the buffeting we have endured,
she would be leaking like a sieve.

And Mr. Mellaire, out of his own experience, has added to my respect for
the Horn. When he was a young man he was once eight weeks in making
around from 50 in the Atlantic to 50 in the Pacific. Another time his
vessel was compelled to put back twice to the Falklands for repairs. And
still another time, in a wooden ship running back in distress to the
Falklands, his vessel was lost in a shift of gale in the very entrance to
Port Stanley. As he told me:

"And after we'd been there a month, sir, who should come in but the old
_Lucy Powers_. She was a sight!--her foremast clean gone out of her and
half her spars, the old man killed from one of the spars falling on him,
the mate with two broken arms, the second mate sick, and what was left of
the crew at the pumps. We'd lost our ship, so my skipper took charge,
refitted her, doubled up both crews, and we headed the other way around,
pumping two hours in every watch clear to Honolulu."

The poor wretched chickens! Because of their ill-judged moulting they
are quite featherless. It is a marvel that one of them survives, yet so
far we have lost only six. Margaret keeps the kerosene stove going, and,
though they have ceased laying, she confidently asserts that they are all
layers and that we shall have plenty of eggs once we get fine weather in
the Pacific.

There is little use to describe these monotonous and perpetual westerly
gales. One is very like another, an