The _Shenandoah_ also ran up her number, a spot of color in the beautiful spread of white cotton canvas on her yards. The sky was dull, but the clear air set her off with cameo like distinctness against the grey background of the horizon. The deep blue of the sea smothered white under her bow and, as she rolled gracefully, the yellow gleam of her copper flashed along under her sleek black side, or else we caught a glimpse of her white decks over the line of her bulwarks, as she dipped to leeward.
We had sighted the sail ahead, and, having our starboard tacks aboard, were accorded the right of way. Hitchen, of the other watch, gathered with a group of us on the fo'c'sle head to watch the stranger drive past us. Being somewhat of a scholar, the little Englishman delivered himself of the following verse:
"If close hauled on the starboard tack, No other ship can cross your track; If on the port tack you appear, Ships going free must all keep clear; While you must yield when going free, To sail close hauled or on your lee. And, if you have the wind right aft, Keep clear of every sailing craft."
In obedience to this Law of the Sea, the four-masted ship _Shenandoah_ starboarded a point, passing the _Fuller_ well to windward, and some five miles south of the Island of Diego Ramirez.
After close to two and a half months at sea we had reached the turning point on the long course to Honolulu. The Atlantic with its trials lay behind us, and just in our wake the sullen waters of the Horn lashed themselves against the coast of Terra Del Fuego. Ahead stretched the broad Pacific, greatest of oceans, and fraught with every angle of adventure that comes to the men who sail. Indeed the sailing of a great ship like the _Fuller_ is the rarest kind of sport from the standpoint of seamanship, where every stitch of canvas is made to draw to its full capacity in every wind that blows. From the cold latitudes of the Cape up to abreast of Valparaiso, we had good lively sailing. Great rollers followed us, for the winds were mostly fair, and, as the seas overtook us and expended themselves to the north, we drove onward, cutting down the latitude in record time; the cape pigeons were left behind, but several albatross formed a convoy almost to the edge of Capricorn.