Great West Wind Drift making against us. It is four days since our last
instrument-sight of the sun.

This storm-vexed ocean has become populous. No ships are getting round,
and each day adds to our number. Never a brief day passes without our
sighting from two or three to a dozen hove-to on port tack or starboard
tack. Captain West estimates there must be at least two hundred sail of
us. A ship hove-to with preventer tackles on the rudder-head is
unmanageable. Each night we take our chance of unavoidable and
disastrous collision. And at times, glimpsed through the snow-squalls,
we see and curse the ships, east-bound, that drive past us with the West
Wind and the West Wind Drift at their backs. And so wild is the mind of
man that Mr. Pike and Mr. Mellaire still aver that on occasion they have
known gales to blow ships from east to west around the Horn. It surely
has been a year since we of the _Elsinore_ emerged from under the lee of
Tierra Del Fuego into the snorting south-west gales. A century, at
least, has elapsed since we sailed from Baltimore.

* * * * *

And I don't give a snap of my fingers for all the wrath and fury of this
dim-gray sea at the tip of the earth. I have told Margaret that I love
her. The tale was told in the shelter of the weather cloth, where we
clung together in the second dog-watch last evening. And it was told
again, and by both of us, in the bright-lighted chart-room after the
watches had been changed at eight bells. Yes, and her face was storm-
bright, and all of her was very proud, save that her eyes were warm and
soft and fluttered with lids that just would flutter maidenly and
womanly. It was a great hour--our great hour.

A poor devil of a man is most lucky when, loving, he is loved. Grievous
indeed must be the fate of the lover who is unloved. And I, for one, and
for still other reasons, congratulate myself upon the vastitude of my
good fortune. For see, were Margaret any other sort of a woman, were she
. . . well, just the lovely and lovable and adorably snuggly sort who
seem made just precisely for love and loving and nestling into the strong
arms of a man--why, there wouldn't be anything remarkable or wonderful
about her loving me. But Margaret is Margaret, strong, self-possessed,
serene, controlled, a very mistress of herself. And there's the
miracle--that such a woman should have been awakened to love by me. It
is almost unbelievable. I go out of my way to