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Joshua Slocum - Sailing Alone Around The World
was obliged by sheer force of the wind to return and take up anchorage again and remain till the gale
abated; and lucky she was to get back!
Meeting this vessel was a little godsend. She was commanded and officered by high-class sailors and
educated gentlemen. An entertainment that was gotten up on her, impromptu, at the Notch would be hard
to beat anywhere. One of her midshipmen sang popular songs in French, German, and Spanish, and one
(so he said) in Russian. If the audience did not know the lingo of one song from another, it was no
drawback to the merriment.
I was left alone the next day, for then the Huemel put out on her voyage the gale having abated. I
spent a day taking in wood and water; by the end of that time the weather was fine. Then I sailed from
the desolate place.
There is little more to be said concerning the Spray's first passage through the strait that would
differ from what I have already recorded. She anchored and weighed many times, and beat many days
against the current, with now and then a "slant" for a few miles, till finally she gained anchorage and
shelter for the night at Port Tamar, with Cape Pillar in sight to the west. Here I felt the throb of the great
ocean that lay before me. I knew now that I had put a world behind me, and that I was opening out
another world ahead. I had passed the haunts of savages. Great piles of granite mountains of bleak and
lifeless aspect were now astern; on some of them not even a speck of moss had ever grown. There was an
unfinished newness all about the land. On the hill back of Port Tamar a small beacon had been thrown
up, showing that some man had been there. But how could one tell but that he had died of loneliness and
grief? In a bleak land is not the place to enjoy solitude.
Throughout the whole of the strait west of Cape Froward I saw no animals except dogs owned by
savages. These I saw often enough, and heard them yelping night and day. Birds were not plentiful. The
scream of a wild fowl, which I took for a loon, sometimes startled me with its piercing cry. The
steamboat duck, so called because it propels itself over the sea with its wings, and resembles a miniature
side-wheel steamer in its motion, was sometimes seen scurrying on out of danger. It never flies, but,
hitting the water instead of the air with its wings, it moves faster than a rowboat or a canoe. The few
fur-seals I saw were very shy; and of fishes I saw next to none at all. I did not catch one; indeed, I seldom
or never put a hook over during the whole voyage. Here in the strait I found great abundance of mussels
of an excellent quality. I fared sumptuously on them. There was a sort of swan, smaller than a Muscovy
duck, which might have been brought down with the gun, but in the loneliness of life about the dreary
country I found myself in no mood to make one life less, except in self-defense.
CHAPTER VIII
From Cape Pillar into the Pacific - Driven by a tempest toward Cape Horn - Captain Slocum's greatest
sea adventure - Beaching the strait again by way of Cockburn Channel - Some savages find the
carpet-tacks - Danger from firebrands - A series of fierce williwaws - Again sailing westward.
It was the 3d of March when the Spray sailed from Port Tamar direct for Cape Pillar, with the
wind from the northeast, which I fervently hoped might hold till she cleared the land; but there was no
such good luck in store. It soon began to rain and thicken in the northwest, boding no good. The
Spray reared Cape Pillar rapidly, and, nothing loath, plunged into the Pacific Ocean at once, taking
her first bath of it in the gathering storm. There was no turning back even had I wished to do so, for the
land was now shut out by the darkness of night. The wind freshened, and I took in a third reef. The sea
was confused and treacherous. In such a time as this the old fisherman prayed, "Remember, Lord, my
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