the Cape, it is
necessary to go well south, in order to avoid the great westerly set of
the Agulhas current, which for ever sweeps steadily round the southern
extremity of the African continent at an average rate of three or four
miles an hour. To homeward-bound ships this is a great boon. No matter
what the weather may be--a stark calm or a gale of wind right on end in
your teeth--that vast, silent river in the sea steadily bears you on at
the same rate in the direction of home. It is perfectly true that with
a gale blowing across the set of this great current, one of the very
ugliest combinations of broken waves is raised; but who cares for that,
when he knows that, as long as the ship holds together, some seventy or
eighty miles per day nearer home must be placed to her credit? In like
manner, it is of the deepest comfort to know that, storm or calm, fair
or foul, the current of time, unhasting, unresting, bears us on to the
goal that we shall surely reach--the haven of unbroken rest.

Not the least of the minor troubles on board the CACHALOT was the
uncertainty of our destination; we never knew where we were going.
It may seem a small point, but it is really not so unimportant as a
landsman might imagine. On an ordinary passage, certain well-known signs
are as easily read by the seaman as if the ship's position were given
out to him every day. Every alteration of the course signifies some
point of the journey reached, some well-known track entered upon, and
every landfall made becomes a new departure from whence to base one's
calculations, which, rough as they are, rarely err more than a few days.

Say, for instance, you are bound for Calcutta. The first of the
north-east trades will give a fair idea of your latitude being about the
edge of the tropics somewhere, or say from 20deg. to 25deg. N., whether
you have sighted any of the islands or not. Then away you go before the
wind down towards the Equator, the approach to which is notified by the
loss of the trade and the dirty, changeable weather of the "doldrums."
That weary bit of work over, along come the south-east trades, making
you brace "sharp up," and sometimes driving you uncomfortably near the
Brazilian coast. Presently more "doldrums," with a good deal more
wind in them than in the "wariables" of the line latitude. The brave
"westerly" will come along by-and-by and release you, and, with a
staggering press of sail carried to the reliable gale, away you go