gloomy; the wind, northeast,
and blowing a gale, sent feather-white spume along the coast; such a
sea ran as would swamp an ill-appointed ship. As the sloop neared the
entrance to the strait I observed that two great tide-races made
ahead, one very close to the point of the land and one farther
offshore. Between the two, in a sort of channel, through combers, went
the _Spray_ with close-reefed sails. But a rolling sea followed her a
long way in, and a fierce current swept around the cape against her;
but this she stemmed, and was soon chirruping under the lee of Cape
Virgins and running every minute into smoother water. However, long
trailing kelp from sunken rocks waved forebodingly under her keel, and
the wreck of a great steamship smashed on the beach abreast gave a
gloomy aspect to the scene.

I was not to be let off easy. The Virgins would collect tribute even
from the _Spray_ passing their promontory. Fitful rain-squalls from
the northwest followed the northeast gale. I reefed the sloop's sails,
and sitting in the cabin to rest my eyes, I was so strongly impressed
with what in all nature I might expect that as I dozed the very air I
breathed seemed to warn me of danger. My senses heard "_Spray_ ahoy!"
shouted in warning. I sprang to the deck, wondering who could be there
that knew the _Spray_ so well as to call out her name passing in the
dark; for it was now the blackest of nights all around, except away in
the southwest, where the old familiar white arch, the terror of Cape
Horn, rapidly pushed up by a southwest gale. I had only a moment to
douse sail and lash all solid when it struck like a shot from a
cannon, and for the first half-hour it was something to be remembered
by way of a gale. For thirty hours it kept on blowing hard. The sloop
could carry no more than a three-reefed mainsail and forestaysail;
with these she held on stoutly and was not blown out of the strait. In
the height of the squalls in this gale she doused all sail, and this
occurred often enough.

After this gale followed only a smart breeze, and the _Spray_, passing
through the narrows without mishap, cast anchor at Sandy Point on
February 14, 1896.

[Illustration: The course of the _Spray_ through the Strait of
Magellan.]

Sandy Point (Punta Arenas) is a Chilean coaling-station, and boasts
about two thousand inhabitants, of mixed nationality, but mostly
Chileans. What with sheep-farming, gold-mining, and hunting, the
settlers in this