Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the careful preparation, the determination to succeed, lies a love of
the game for its own sake.
On the fourth day of the storm Slocum saw and grasped a
chance to escape from the tempest and rescue his plan of a westward
crossing of the Pacific. Through cloud, rain and driving spray he
caught a glimpse of a mountain thrusting out of the sea. He reckoned
that it marked an alternative entrance to Magellan's Strait. He hois-
ted a tiny sail (his mainsail had been torn to shreds in the first mo-
ments of the storm) put the tiller over and made for land:
. . . on the outside coast of Tierra del Fuego. It was indeed a moun-
tainous sea. When the sloop was in the fiercest squalls, with only the
reefed forestaysail set, even that small sail shook her from keelson to
truck when it shivered by the leech . . . Under pressure of the smallest
sail I could set she made for the land like a race-horse, and steering her
over the crests of the waves so that she might not trip was nice work. I
stood at the helm now and made the most of it.
Night closed in before the sloop reached the land, leaving her feel-
ing the way in pitchy darkness. I saw breakers ahead before long. At
this I wore ship and stood offshore, but was immediately startled by
the tremendous roaring of breakers again ahead and on the lee bow.
This puzzled me, for there should have been no broken water where
I supposed myself to be. I kept off a good bit, then wore round, but
finding broken water also there, threw her head again offshore. In this
way, among dangers, I spent the rest of the night. Hail and sleet in
the fierce squalls cut my flesh till the blood trickled over my face; but
what of that? It was daylight, and the sloop was in the midst of the
Milky Way of the sea, which is northwest of Cape Horn, and it was the
white breakers of a huge sea over sunken rocks which had threatened
to engulf her through the night. It was Fury Island I had sighted and
steered for, and what a panorama was before me now and all around!
It was not the time to complain of a broken skin. What could I do but
