e indeed alone, by
many hundreds of miles, and never having felt anxious about a ship
before, the old whaler was to give me a new experience.

"In the afternoon of the beginning of the gale I helped make fast the
T.G. sails, upper topsails and foresail, and was horrified on arrival on
deck to find that the heavy water we continued to ship, was starting the
coal bags floating in places. These, acting as battering-rams, tore
adrift some of my carefully stowed petrol cases and endangered the lot. I
had started to make sail fast at 3 P.M. and it was 9.30 P.M. when I had
finished putting on additional lashings to everything I could. So rapidly
did the sea get up that one was continually afloat and swimming about. I
turned in for 2 hours and lay awake hearing the crash of the seas and
thinking how long those cases would stand it, till my watch came at
midnight as a relief. We were under 2 lower topsails and hove to, the
engines going dead slow to assist keeping head to wind. At another time I
should have been easy in my mind; now the water that came aboard was
simply fearful, and the wrenching on the old ship was enough to worry any
sailor called upon to fill his decks with garbage fore and aft. Still
'Risk nothing and do nothing,' if funds could not supply another ship, we
simply had to overload the one we had, or suffer worse things down south.
The watch was eventful as the shaking up got the fine coal into the
bilges, and this mixing with the oil from the engines formed balls of
coal and grease which, ordinarily, went up the pumps easily; now however
with the great strains, and hundreds of tons on deck, as she continually
filled, the water started to come in too fast for the half-clogged pumps
to cope with. An alternative was offered to me in going faster so as to
shake up the big pump on the main engines, and this I did--in spite of
myself--and in defiance of the first principles of seamanship. Of course,
we shipped water more and more, and only to save a clean breach of the
decks did I slow down again and let the water gain. My next card was to
get the watch on the hand-pumps as well, and these were choked, too, or
nearly so.

"Anyhow with every pump,--hand and steam,--going, the water continued to
rise in the stokehold. At 4 A.M. all hands took in the fore lower
topsail, leaving us under a minimum of sail. The gale increased to storm
force (force 11 out of 12) and such a sea got up as only the Southern
Fifties can prod