She was a wooden ship, and her
ceaseless straining had opened her seams, so that twice a day the watch
took its turn at the pumps.
The _Mary Rogers_ was strained, the crew was strained, and big Dan
Cullen, master, was likewise strained. Perhaps he was strained most of
all, for upon him rested the responsibility of that titanic struggle. He
slept most of the time in his clothes, though he rarely slept. He
haunted the deck at night, a great, burly, robust ghost, black with the
sunburn of thirty years of sea and hairy as an orang-utan. He, in turn,
was haunted by one thought of action, a sailing direction for the Horn:
_Whatever you do, make westing! make westing!_ It was an obsession. He
thought of nothing else, except, at times, to blaspheme God for sending
such bitter weather.
_Make westing!_ He hugged the Horn, and a dozen times lay hove to with
the iron Cape bearing east-by-north, or north-north-east, a score of
miles away. And each time the eternal west wind smote him back and he
made easting. He fought gale after gale, south to 64 deg., inside the
antarctic drift-ice, and pledged his immortal soul to the Powers of
Darkness for a bit of westing, for a slant to take him around.
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