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In going up the rigging it seemed absolutely to pin us down to the shrouds; and on the yard there was no such thing as turning a face to windward. Yet there was no driving sleet and darkness and wet and cold as off Cape Horn; and instead of stiff oilcloth suits, southwester caps, and thick boots, we had on hats, round jackets, duck trousers, light shoes, and everything light and easy.
H. had gone to the Home the afternoon before, so there had been no preaching service as ordinarily in the little schoolhouse across the road. The boys were talking of going to the Home across the bay next day in a boat, but a wind came up which finally developed into a stout southwester, and Monday was a most disagreeable day.
Those who have been to Mount Vesuvius, and who have had the hardihood to seek the exquisite Lacryma produced on the southwester slopes of the hill, will remember a peculiar ravine running for nearly a mile from the sandy part of the cone, and covered with a stunted green bush of fern-like leaves. It is the nearest green spot to the calcined cone.
It was surely some desperate business indeed that sent them out into the face of that cutting wind which made even these hardy riders, burned hard and dry by scorching suns and biting blizzards, wince and shelter their faces with their gauntleted hands. "Deuce of a wind, this!" said the Superintendent. "It is the raw southwester that gets to the bone," replied Inspector Dickson.
The sun was out bright, the sea of a deep blue, fringed with the white foam of the waves, which ran high before a strong southwester; our solitary ship tore on through the open water as though glad to be out of her confinement; and the ice islands lay scattered here and there, of various sizes and shapes, reflecting the bright rays of the sun, and drifting slowly northward before the gale.
The vessel was bowling along under a brisk southwester, which he found had been blowing steadily almost from the moment he had left the helm. The land was as yet but a dim line on the horizon; it was necessary to stand in much closer if any of the landmarks were to be recognized.
The whole court was like a flood, and the drops went splashing up again as if in play; Purday wore his master's old southwester coat, and looked shiny all over; and when the maids had to cross the court, they went click, click, in their pattens under their umbrellas.
"Tell that to a landsman," answered the Captain, "and not to a man who was with Jacob Le Maire the first time when them harricanes that dances the devil's hornpipe the whole year round Cape Horn ever had a chance to split an English jib. He was like a grampus when he set his teeth, and a southwester couldn't blow harder if he chose. But where away was I when I begun chase after old Jacob Le Maire?
On the 2nd September a fierce southwester drove Admiral Oquendo in his galleon, together with one of the great galeasses, two large Venetian ships, the Ratty and the Balauzara, and thirty-six other vessels, upon the Irish coast, where nearly every soul on board perished, while the few who escaped to the shore notwithstanding their religious affinity with the inhabitants were either butchered in cold blood, or sent coupled in halters from village to village, in order to be shipped to England.
And, as John Barleycorn heated his way into my brain, thawing my reticence, melting my modesty, talking through me and with me and as me, my adopted twin brother and alter ego, I, too, raised my voice to show myself a man and an adventurer, and bragged in detail and at length of how I had crossed San Francisco Bay in my open skiff in a roaring southwester when even the schooner sailors doubted my exploit.
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