Donald was to go on duty with the mate’s, or port watch, at midnight, but he was awakened suddenly at six bells by loud shouting on deck and the violent careening of the ship. Hinkel could be heard bawling, “Ledt go royal und to’gallundt halliards and clew up! All handts!” Then Jenkins opened the half-deck door for a second and yelled, “Roll out! Look alive!” and mingled with his shout came the booming roar of wind, the swash of heavy water and the thunder of slatting canvas.

“A ruddy pampero!” cried Thompson, leaping from his bunk and pulling on his boots. “Jump, kid, she’s on her beam ends!” Donald dropped to the sloping floor of the berth, hauled his boots on the wrong feet, and sprang after Thompson into the darkness. When he got outside he cannoned into someone running aft, who cursed him and vanished in the howling blackness. The lee scuppers were a boiling froth of water waist deep, and up aloft the canvas was thundering as the royal and t’gallant yards came down by the run. The ship was over on her port side at an alarming angle, and for a minute Donald could do nothing but hang on to the mizzen gear, gasping and dazed, until he got his bearings.

The German second mate was barking commands from the break of the poop when something banged aloft. A voice shouted, “Maint’gallan’s’l’s gone!” Then Thompson grabbed him by the arm. “Bear a hand haulin’ up yer mains’l!” he roared, and Donald scrambled for’ard along the sloping decks and hauled on the gear with a mob of “hey-ho’ing,” swearing men. Then the mate appeared—(the captain was on the poop)—and he gave tongue. “What in hell are you all adoin’ here?” he snarled. “Aloft an’ stow th’ fore an’ main r’yals you boys! Git some beef on those bunt-lin’s, you hounds, or I’ll kick some go in you! None of yer ‘You pull now, Bill, I pulled last’ work here!”

From the height of the main-royal-yard, Donald could see the water to windward white with foam. The stars were shining clear and bright to the westward, but all was black in the eastern sky and the wind blew in savage gusts, which gave them a hard tussle in subduing the bellying, slatting canvas. By the time they had got the two royals confined in the gaskets, the barque had come to an even keel and was running before the blast under six topsails and foresail.

The crew had hauled up the cross’-jack, mainsail, and hauled down the fore-and-aft sails and were aloft stowing the big t’gallan’s’ls as the barque swung off, staggering and rolling scuppers under in the cross sea which was running, and as soon as the boys came down from the royal yards, the mate chased them up the mast again to help furl the mizzen-upper-topsail, which had been let go. On the completion of this job, and when the crew were pretty well exhausted with pulling, hauling and lifting, Thompson voiced the opinion of all hands: “God help us when we strike some real wind and have to get the muslin off her in a hurry,” he said gloomily. “Those big yards and sails will take charge of us then. We’ll have to let the canvas blow away and pay for it.”

“Pay for it?” queried Donald innocently. “What d’ye mean?”

The senior apprentice laughed grimly. “I was referring to the old yarn about a ’prentice boy who had a rich father. The mate ordered him up one-time to stow the mizzen-royal in a squall. The kid squints aloft and didn’t like the look of the job, so he says to the mate, ‘Oh, let it blow away, sir; father will pay for it!’ That’s what we’ll have to do on this hooker, I’m thinking. I shiver when I think of handling those big courses and tops’ls of ours in a real Cape Horner. We’ll catch it down there and no blushing error! If we only had men for’ad instead of flabby-muscled dock-rats we might get through, but it’ll be all hands every time there’s a job o’ work.”

“How about that donkey engine?” queried Donald. “Isn’t that supposed to help in the heavy work?”

Thompson laughed sarcastically. “A fat lot you know, nipper!” he cried. “Your lousy Scotch ship-owner puts in a donkey and cuts down the crew, but he gives orders to the skipper that the donkey is not to be used except on extra-special occasions. The donkey is the greatest curse of sailormen these days and the owner reaps the benefit. He cuts down the crew on the work it is supposed to do, and saves money in port by using it for loading and discharging cargo. That’s your labor-saving donkey for you!”

The two boys were in the half-deck changing their wet clothing and donning their oilskins for a “stand-by” until their watch was called at midnight, but Mr. Nickerson looked in and ordered them out. “Bear a hand an’ get that maint’gallan’s’l unbent from the yard an’ sent down. It’ll put ye in trim for Cape Stiff!”

The “pampero” was the first real dusting the barque had tackled, and the old timers shook their heads ominously and muttered dread prophecies of times to come. In the weight of the squalls blowing, and under heavy weather sail, she made a dirty job of it, and it took two men at the wheel, sweating, to try and steady her. Big seas piled up astern and, overtaking the sluggish, deep-laden barque, broke on both quarters and crashed aboard—filling the decks from fo’c’sle-head to poop deck. “A ruddy half-tide rock!” growled the men as they worked in water, waist-deep, handling the remains of the maint’gallan’s’l, a brand-new heavy weather sail, which had split in several places. “Cheap gear for a cheap ship!” commented the sailmaker.

By the time the pampero had blown its edge off, Donald returned to his binnacle-trimming and time-keeping job on the poop, and the barque, braced sharp up and with lower stays’ls set, was plunging and diving on her course to the Falklands and Cape Horn. There was a cold bite to the wind that Donald had never felt before—precursor of the bitter windy latitudes they were running into—and he scrambled into the kindly lee of the chart-house. The lee port-hole was open and Donald could hear the angry voice of the captain laying down the law to the second mate. “Ye wur asleep on watch, mister,” he was saying, “or ye’d ha’ seen that squall makin’ up. It’s a wonder tae me ye didny jump th’ masts oot of her.... She was in th’ thick of it afore ye sung out. Ye’re a damned worthless sojer—that’s whit ye are—an’ yer spell in jyle has made ye forget all th’ seamanship ye iver knew....” Donald opened his eyes. “Spell in jail?” He wondered, and as he had no respect for either the Old Man or Hinkel, he kept his ears agog for more. “Don’t gie me ony back chat!” the skipper was shouting, “or I’ll dis-rate ye an’ send ye forrard.... an’ ye know what th’ men’ll dae if they ken ye wur th’ man what....” The boy strained his ears to catch the remainder of the sentence when the mate’s strident voice interrupted with—“Boy! boy! Where’n Tophet has that ruddy young sojer skulked to? Oh, ye’re there, are ye? D’ye know it’s five minutes of eight bells? Look smart, naow, an’ call th’ starboard watch or I’ll trim yer hair for ye!”

Life under Mr. Nickerson’s command was Heaven compared to his watches with the bullying German, and Donald experienced a revival of spirits at the change. Not that the Nova Scotian was an easy task-master. By no means! But Nickerson was too much of a man to bully and ill-treat a boy, though he was not so particular with the ’fore-mast hands. He was a “driver” in every sense of the word and kept Thompson and McKenzie up to the mark, but he never set them at useless “work-up” jobs. Thompson, as an apprentice almost out of his time, he did not interfere with much—Thompson was an able fellow, anyway, and would make a smart officer when he got his ticket—but Donald was the mate’s particular protÉgÉ, and many a time the lad wished he did not stand so high in the officer’s favor.

“Boy,” said the mate one afternoon a day or two after the pampero, “I want to see ef ye’ve lost yer nerve after floppin’ off that there gaff th’ other day. Naow, son, d’ye think ye kin shin up to that main truck an’ reeve off a signal halliard?” Donald stared up at the dizzy height of the main-mast to where the truck capped it—a good one hundred and eighty feet above deck—and felt some trepidation at the thought of the job. Nickerson was watching him narrowly. “Haow abaout it, boy?” he said.

“Yes, sir!” answered Donald after a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll go up, sir!”

“Well, then, ask th’ bos’n to give ye a coil o’ signal halliard stuff an’ shin it up. Sharp, naow!” Everything with the mate was “Look alive!” “Jump!” or “Nip along, you!” with a few blistering oaths added to put the proper amount of “go” into the command. Anything moving slow was the officer’s bete noir, and the men used to remark that he “sh’d ha’ bin a ruddy ingine-driver on a perishin’ mail train!”

Donald moved “sharp” and started aloft. There was a light breeze and enough swell to cause the masts to sway in an arc of ten degrees. He made the royal yard without difficulty—he had been up there often before and under worse conditions—and after his climb up the Jacob’s ladder, he rested with his feet on the yard and held on to the eyes of the royal rigging. From this giddy perch he had a wonderful view of the ship one hundred and fifty feet below, and the fore-shortening of her hull from this height made him feel as if this weight aloft would cause her to capsize. Below him the sails bellied out in a succession of snow-white curves—full and rounded with the wind and each silently pulling the ship along—and the spreading rigging looked like a spider’s web radiating from where he stood. All around was sea and sky and the wake of the barque could be seen making a foamy path through the greeny-blue of ocean, with a few sea-birds wheeling above it. A gull sailed past him—squawking as if in jealous anger at the boy invading its ethereal realm, then the mate’s stentorian voice floated up from below, “Nip up, naow! Ye’ve bin sight-seein’ long enough!”

Glancing up at the thrusting height of the sky-sail pole to the truck thirty feet above, a slight wave of fear came over him—an aftermath of his jigger-gaff experience—and he closed his eyes for a moment until his nerve returned. There was no skys’l yard crossed on the Kelvinhaugh and no means of getting up to the truck save by shinning up the greasy pole with the aid of the skys’l back-stay. With the halliard in his teeth, he took a long breath and grasping the stay with one hand and encircling the mast with his left arm and his legs, he started up and reached the eyes of the skys’l rigging, perspiring and gasping. From the eyes of the rigging, the pole up-thrust, smooth and bare, for about eight feet and, gulping a deep breath, he wriggled and grasped the smooth spar with his two hands. In a few seconds he brought the round sphere of the truck on a level with his head, and hanging on to the mast with legs and his left arm, he took the halliard from between his teeth and thrust it up through the sheave in the truck with his free hand.

By this time he was almost exhausted with the effort of the climb and holding the weight of his body on the greasy spar with one arm. But though he had thrust the end of the halliard up through the sheave, he had yet to bring the end down through the pulley hole, and this called for a hand to hold the line and another to reeve it down through. The rolling of the ship was swaying the mast, and, as he hung desperately on to loo’ard, the dead-weight of his body almost wrenched the muscles out of his shoulders and arms. The swinging of the mast was nauseating him in his excited condition, and he felt his strength gradually ebbing. The breath was hissing through his clenched teeth in rapid gasps; his heart was pounding fiercely, and his imagination began to picture horrid visions of him hurtling through the air and crashing to the deck.

“I’ve got to do it! I’ve got to do it!” he panted, and making a supreme effort he thrust the line into his left hand, and reaching over the truck with the other, pushed the end down and through. Grasping this in his teeth, he slid down the pole, caught the skys’l backstay and swung down to the spreader of the cross-trees.

Exhausted, sick and shaky, he sat on the spreader for a few moments until breath and composure was restored, and then he came down on deck and belayed the halliard. Mr. Nickerson was smoking a clay pipe and leaning back in a corner of the poop rail when he mounted the ladder and reported, “Halliard’s rove, sir!” The mate looked quizzically at him for a second, and taking the pipe from his mouth, remarked, “Ye were a hell of a long time doin’ it!” After accomplishing what, to Donald, seemed a most hazardous and herculean feat, this was all the praise he got. It was the way of the sea!

In the night watch the mate called Donald over to him. It was a quiet evening—cold but clear, and with a moderate breeze blowing. “Son,” he said, “would you go aloft again to-morrow an’ reeve another signal halliard?”

“Yes, sir!” answered the boy bravely, and wondering what was coming.

“Y’ain’t scared?”

“Not now, sir. I was while I was up there, but I won’t be next time.” Nickerson seemed pleased. “That’s why I sent you up, boy,” he said. “I wanted to see if your nerve was good. You’ll do, son!” He puffed away at his pipe for a spell.

“What d’ye cal’late makes the Old Man an’ Hinkel treat you the way they do? S’pose ye spin me something of how ye come to go to sea.” He spoke kindly.

McKenzie told him in a short narration the events which were responsible for his being on the Kelvinhaugh. The mate plied him with questions and grunted at the answers. “So yer old man was skipper of the Ansonia, was he?” he ejaculated one time during the boy’s story.

“Yes, sir! Did you know him?” Donald had not mentioned the Ansonia. Nickerson affected not to hear. “Go on with yer yarn,” he growled, and when Donald had finished, he asked, “This Hinkel, naow. Hev ye ever seen him afore? No? D’ye know anything about him?”

“Well—er—I’m not sure,” said the boy doubtfully, “except what I overheard the other night.” And in answer to the officer’s queries, he told him of the “spell in jail” and “if the men knew you were the man” fragments which had come to his ears through the open port. Mr. Nickerson was greatly interested. “Humph!” he commented. “Said he’d been in jail did he?” Then he straightened up with a jerk and slapped the rail with his hand and the smack made Donald jump. “I’ve got him, by thunder! I’ve got him dead to loo’ard this time!” he ejaculated. “I knew I wasn’t far out when I told him the other night I had his flag and number!” Then quietly he said, “Son, did ye ever hear the story about the ship Orkney Isles and a little ’prentice boy name of Willy McFee? No? Well, alright! Ask McLean to step aft here a moment and you skin along and see what time it is instead of yarning here. Hump yourself naow!” Donald “humped”—smiling at the young officer’s peculiar manner.

Holding on down the South American coast, the Kelvinhaugh began to prepare for the ordeal ahead. Her winter weather canvas had already been bent, and the carpenter was busy re-wedging the hatches and with his crony, the bos’n, getting the ship’s gear chocked, lashed and restowed. They went about their work with ominous head-shakings, and the ordinary seamen were beginning to exhibit signs of nervousness with the ceaseless recital of the barque’s faults and the Horn in winter, which the old-timers were forever croaking about. In the dog-watches, there was less yarning and skylarking around the fore-hatch, and oilskins, re-patched and re-oiled, hung in the sun around the fore-rigging—unmistakable forecasts of dirty weather ahead in the coming days.

In the half-deck, the boys spent their evenings yarning and playing cards—all but McKenzie, who was busy overhauling his wretched kit. Moore had a splendid outfit of everything in the way of oil-clothes and warm clothing, so he didn’t worry—neither did he offer to augment Donald’s meagre rig. Thompson and Jenkins had a miscellaneous collection of clothing sadly in need of overhaul, but they were young and thoughtless. The Horn didn’t scare them! No, by Jupiter, they were rough and tough and had hair on their chests—they would start straightening out their gear in plenty of time. When she crossed forty-five south it would be time enough to make and mend for fifty-five! So they bragged, but it was safe bragging, as they knew they’d have the captain’s slop chest to fall back on. Thompson had rounded the Horn before, but he did it in summer from Australia, and with a brave west wind astern. He’d never experienced the passage in winter, and he was not impressed. McKenzie was an “old woman” for his pains, they said, but Donald preferred to heed the advice of men like Martin and McLean and to prepare, as the bos’n and chips were preparing the ship. They weren’t doing that for nothing. Not by a long shot!

So he stitched and patched and oiled and did the best he could with his shoddy gear, and the best was not enough. He knew it, but he did not complain. One may growl about the ship, the weather, the mates and things extraneous, but lamentations about one’s bodily ills or aches, the work one has to do, a wetting or a freezing, is bad form aboard ship and receives no sympathetic hearing. “Serve you dam’ well right. What did you come to sea for?” is the invariable answer to such whines.

The barque crossed “forty-five” in a chilly blow, and for two days they had wild tussles aloft with wet, heavy canvas, and severe knockings about on flooded decks hauling on clewing-up gear or braces, downhauls and halliards. Then the “hairy chesters” began to get busy, but the time had gone when oilskins could be re-oiled and dried in the sun. The days were shortening rapidly and the sun’s warmth was becoming nullified by the chill of the high latitudes. Each knot they reeled off to the south’ard saw the sea changing from a warm blue to a frigid green, and azure skies to a gloomy lead-colored pall, solid with potential gales.

Captain Muirhead was nervous—all hands could see that. He spent more time on deck and hovered between barometer and binnacle, and when the ship came up with fifty degrees south, he ordered the royal yards sent down on deck—much to the unvoiced scorn of the mate—and the Kelvinhaugh was now reduced in canvas to nothing above her big single topgallantsails.

Nickerson sneered mentally. “How does the looney think she’s agoin’ to make her westing under these clipped kites? All right to send down yards in a light ship, but this heavy drogher.... Huh! Ef it was some of th’ Bluenosers or Saint John packets I’ve sailed in, they ratch her around under skys’ls, by Jupiter! No wonder these limejuicers never make a passage when they have these careful old women in command of them. Huh!”

They wallowed down past the Falklands in remarkably fine weather for the latitude, and headed for Cape St. John on Staten Island—easternmost sentinel to the stormy Horn. There was no doubt now of the times ahead. Snow had fallen once or twice, and ice had formed on deck and lower rigging in early morning hours, but the gales...?

“I don’t like this,” growled Martin to Donald one dog-watch, as they peered at the yellow sunset over towards the Fuegian coast. There was a long rolling sea coming up from the south’ard, with the push of the Pacific Antarctic drift, and the wind had been “knocking her off” all the afternoon, until the yards were braced “on the back-stays.” There was a chilly spite in the breeze, which was beginning to pipe up a mournful note in the wire standing rigging, and the south was a black wall, in which sea and sky merged as one. “There’s dirt acomin’ afore long ef I know the signs, but that ruddy Dutch greaser don’t know enough to strip her for it. Ef I was you youngster, I’d go’n turn in right now an’ catch up on sleep, for, mark me well, it’ll be Cape Stiff afore mornin’!”

Donald took the bos’n’s advice and, refusing to join the little game of “nap” which the half-deckers were playing for plug-tobacco stakes, he rolled into his bunk and slept, but not before he had placed his boots and oilskins in a handy place.

He was in the midst of a delightful dream some hours later, wherein he was a spectator watching a young, lean, hawk-nosed pirate, strangely like Mr. Nickerson, prodding his Uncle David, Captain Muirhead and Hinkel down a plank out-thrust from the side of the Kelvinhaugh. At the barque’s jigger-gaff flew a black flag, upon which was the skull and cross-bones in white. Uncle David was screaming for mercy, and Nickerson was jabbing him in the back with the point of a huge cutlass. Then the scene changed and the mate was pouring bags of golden sovereigns into his lap and telling him to take them home to his mother. “Buy a castle, son,” he was saying, “and one with beautiful trees and gardens with wonderful flowers—flowers with nice smells to them—geraniums, roses, honey-suckles, rhododendrons, mignonettes, and don’t forget pansies, pretty velvet-petaled pansies—” There came a frightful lurch of the ship which flung him rudely against the steel wall of the berth, a roaring of a big wind on deck and the staggering crash of heavy seas cascading over the rails. Guttural yells sounded from the poop. “Led go to’gallundt halliards!” and someone bawled through the half-deck ventilator. “All out for God’s sake!” In the dark, Donald grabbed his boots and oilskins and Thompson shouted, “Hell’s bells! Strike a light someone! Here’s Cape Horn!”