“Indeed we have, Mr. Atkinson. We will not be properly around until we again reach 50 south latitude, of course, but we have indeed passed the meridian of the cape.”
William wanted to cheer, but instead ran to the mainmast ratlines and climbed aloft to see if he could spy the Horn, only to be shooed down a few minutes later by Mr. Atkinson. They were too far south, in any case. Cape Horn was over the horizon to the north and just slightly east. Word spread quickly, and soon everyone aboard had heard the news.
Harry joked with the cook, Jeremiah. "Not such an unlucky ship after all, doctor. Maybe your Jonah bring us this easterly, what do ya think?”
“Aach, don' be bothering me," the cook replied gesturing with his cleaver. "We's not in Chile yet. No, sir. Not by a long shot.”
By early afternoon, the easterly wind had begun to die. The sails hung limp and slatting, and the ship slowed until she was nearly becalmed in the long oily swells. The captain's family, who had been on deck since noon, were quickly ushered below. The temperature dropped suddenly again as a bank of low clouds obscured the horizon. Then it began to snow and, for a time, the ship and the sky almost disappeared in the swirling storm. When the snow squall passed, the ship glistened in a sepulchral whiteness.
The captain dropped below to check the barometer and returned looking grave. All eyes were turned toward the poop deck as the captain spoke quietly with the mates. Then came the expected battle cry. "All hands to shorten sail.”
The watch below tumbled out on a run. The Cape Horners among them knew what was coming and everyone scrambled to the pin rails. Fred read the deadly earnest in the expressions of Donnie, Harry and the rest and hurried along with them.
“Bunts and clews. Furl the royals and t'gallants. Slack away those bloody halyards, you motherless sons of bitches. Run," Rand shouted, needlessly.
To the bellowing of the commands and the clicking of the patent blocks, Fred grabbed the icy buntlines and hauled with the rest, his hands burning on the snow-crusted lines as the sails slowly gathered up against the yards. Their work on deck done, they scrambled up the ratlines to furl the sails, fighting the snow-covered canvas with frozen hands. Fred tried to focus only on the job he was doing, squatting down on the footropes, trying to pass a gasket to Jerry the Greek, who was bent double over the yard reaching out as far as he could to catch it. The sails were stiff with snow and ice, and furling them was a painful ordeal. The long swells were building and the ship pitched and rolled. Fred shouted curses at the wind as he struggled to pass the gaskets, while avoiding being pitched from his tenuous perch. Both ignored the horizon, which was now wholly a swirl of black and gray and seemed to be rolling toward them at a terrible speed.
In the blackness, around 10 p.m., all sails were furled. The waves grew higher, yet in the relative lull before the storm the ship had almost no headway and so was at the mercy of the swells. The Lady Rebecca rolled sluggishly like a sailor on a three-day drunk. Fred braced himself, his back against the fo'c'sle house with his hand shoved under his armpits, trying in vain to warm his fingers. Looking out in the darkness, he saw a vivid, boiling white line rushing toward them. The long swells had transformed into lines of breaking waves, driven by a demon wind.
The captain yelled, "Hard up your helm. Lee braces.”
Fred and the others ran to the lee pin rail and frantically hauled the forward yards around so that they would be less square to the wind when the blow struck.
When the wind did hit, Fred was first deafened by the unholy roar, and then was tossed against the shrouds. An icy wall of water washed over him but he held tight to the line he had been hauling, as the rushing water lifted him off his feet. The ship staggered and rolled in the infernal blast. Then she fought her way back up, pitching and rolling like a battered boxer, never quite knocked flat, always rising again.
After what seemed like an age, the squall passed, leaving rolling trains of mountainous seas. The Lady Rebecca lay six points to the wind, doggedly fore-reaching under reefed lower topsails. She was not quite beam on, her bowsprit jutting perhaps twenty degrees forward, presenting her stout shoulder to the sea's onslaught, dropping down in the troughs and rising up again to climb the precipitous, breaking crests.
When the watch was sent below Fred threw himself into his bunk fully clothed. Just behind him came Donnie.
“Well, lad. You've got a tale to tell, to be sure. Rounded Cape Horn, an' twice in one day.”
Fred raised his head. "What?”
“We rounded westbound this afternoon, and with these winds pushing us back, we'll likely round it eastbound before dawn. I'm guessin' that this'll not be a fast passage after all." The Irishman grinned wryly and shuffled off to his bunk.
The westerlies began to blow. South of Cape Horn, there was nothing to block the wind, nothing to deflect the waves. Huge and slate gray, the waves grew into massive rolling ranges, each preceded by a long valley. They rose thirty, forty, even fifty feet high, crested by boiling white caps, and each wave that followed was seemingly larger than the last. The Southern Ocean was a vast raceway where the howling westerlies and monstrous seas chased each other endlessly around the bottom of the world.
Fred huddled with the rest of the watch on the leeward side of the poop deck, grimly watching the mountainous waves that rolled at them relentlessly. In the long troughs, the roar of the wind diminished slightly only to rise again to an unearthly howl as the wave lifted them higher and higher. At the top, they were blasted by the full force of the gale, before crashing through the foaming, breaking crest, and plunging down the other side of the wave like a cast-off cork. With each wave, the ship rolled deeply, scooping up tons of green water on the open leeward deck, sending it surging the length of the ship to break against the raised face of the poop deck.
Fred marveled at how the old ship fought the seas, shouldering a roller with a burst of spray and then rising again and again over one towering sea after another, as dogged in her determination as the rolling waves were relentless. The wind was bitterly cold and the spume froze as it struck the shrouds, the running rigging and the reefed sails. All Fred could do was pull his jacket tighter about him and hold on.
The captain stood on the poop deck to windward, their lord and master, staring out into the half-light. A line of dark clouds was bearing down on them.
“All hands to shorten sail," the captain shouted once again. And once again, Fred and the rest of the watch ran to the pin rails. Before they were through, the squall hit with a roar like a million wild beasts. The ship shuddered and rolled, sending the lee rail underwater. Fred held desperately onto the lifeline as the surging icy water, rising up to his chest, tried to carry him away.
When the ship rolled back and the water receded, his face was pelted by sleet. With frozen hands, they belayed and coiled down the clews and bunts and then mounted the weather ratlines to furl the sails, which, held only by the bunts and clews, thrashed wildly. The sailors finally wrestled the frozen sails and secured them with the gaskets and returned to the treacherous, wave-swept deck.
When the squall passed, the sky lightened slightly. Off to windward Fred could see a maelstrom of clouds piled high above the horizon, illuminated by broken shafts of sunlight. At the crest of one wave, Fred was startled to see an albatross serenely rise up from the trough and wheel effortlessly in the gale's blast. It hung there for a moment and then as if by some enchantment flew off to westward, directly into the wind. Fred stood stunned, and then recited a stanza from part of the old poem that his professor had made them all commit to memory.