Captain Nichols had a pleasant way of coming up, especially during the second dog watch, after the mellowing influence of a Chow dinner, cabin style, and conversing for a minute or two. He would let drop a hint as to where we were and sometimes give me sights to work out. While we were making such heavy weather of it and the wheel was hard to manage, he told a story calculated to make me anything but cheerful. The ship had yawed and the slap of the rudder sent the wheel over against all the "beef" I could bring to bear. Then suddenly, when the pressure shifted to the other side, the wheel came back with the kick of a stubborn mule, and I was bodily lifted off my feet, saving my head by doubling about the spindle.
"Look out, son!" shouted the Old Man. "I had a sailor thrown up against the top of the wheelhouse once and his skull bashed in. That was his last trick at the wheel. You better be careful."
At this stage of the voyage hardship had become a habit; rotten tack and half-cooked cracker hash all went the same way; we were toughened to the grind. A mess of weevil-ridden hard bread was disposed of by knocking the worms out and eating what was left, the crumby, mealy stuff, soggy with damp, was often made more palatable by heating in the galley with a sprinkle of molasses or a coating of our abundant sugar. The working of the ship was done in grilling discomfort of wet clothing, and the cold added its quota to our troubles day after day. But for all that we were living. The scenes of wild fury that only those who have run before it in the latitudes of Cape Horn can understand, spread about us in a fitting panorama to the tragedy of suffering on our half-drowned deck. Surely the angels must have wondered at the vast ambition of men who dared such dangers and lived such hardships; all of which vast ambition could be summed up in one sentence--the pay of an able seaman out of the port of New York--eighteen dollars per month, minus "advance" and the deduction for "slops," leaving the net earning in the neighborhood of ten or eleven dollars.
We were getting our romance in the raw, however, and, like most things in this world, we were paying for the show--working our way--through experiences that only those who go down to the sea in deepwater sailing ships know anything about.