Chapter 24

INTRODUCTORY TO CAPE HORN.

And now, through drizzling fogs and vapours, and under damp,
double-reefed top-sails, our wet-decked frigate drew nearer and
nearer to the squally Cape.

Who has not heard of it? Cape Horn, Cape Horn--a _horn_ indeed,
that has tossed many a good ship. Was the descent of Orpheus,
Ulysses, or Dante into Hell, one whit more hardy and sublime than
the first navigator's weathering of that terrible Cape?

Turned on her heel by a fierce West Wind, many an outward-bound
ship has been driven across the Southern Ocean to the Cape of
Good Hope--_that_ way to seek a passage to the Pacific. And that
stormy Cape, I doubt not, has sent many a fine craft to the
bottom, and told no tales. At those ends of the earth are no
chronicles. What signify the broken spars and shrouds that, day
after day, are driven before the prows of more fortunate vessels?
or the tall masts, imbedded in icebergs, that are found floating
by? They but hint the old story--of ships that have sailed from
their ports, and never more have been heard of.

Impracticable Cape! You may approach it from this direction or
that--in any way you please--from the East or from the West; with
the wind astern, or abeam, or on the quarter; and still Cape Horn
is Cape Horn. Cape Horn it is that takes the conceit out of
fresh-water sailors, and steeps in a still salter brine the
saltest. Woe betide the tyro; the fool-hardy, Heaven preserve!

Your Mediterranean captain, who with a cargo of oranges has
hitherto made merry runs across the Atlantic, without so much as
furling a t'-gallant-sail, oftentimes, off Cape Horn, receives a
lesson which he carries to the grave; though the grave--as is too
often the case--follows so hard on the, lesson that no benefit
comes from the experience.

Other strangers who draw nigh to this Patagonia termination of
our Continent, with their souls full of its shipwrecks and
disasters--top-sails cautiously reefed, and everything guardedly
snug--these strangers at first unexpectedly encountering a
tolerably smooth sea, rashly conclude that the Cape, after all,
is but a bugbear; they have been imposed upon by fables, and
founderings and sinkings hereabouts are all cock-and-bull
stories.

"Out reefs, my hearties; fore and aft set t'-gallant-sails! stand
by to give her the fore-top-mast stun'-sail!"

But, Captain Rash, those sails of yours were much safer in the
sail-maker's loft. For now, while the heedless craft is bounding
over the billows, a black cloud rises out of the sea; the sun
drops down from the sky; a horrible mist far and wide spreads
over the water.

"Hands by the halyards! Let go! Clew up!"

Too late.