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``For the tired slave, song lifts the languid oar, And bids it aptly fall, with chime That beautifies the fairest shore, And mitigates the harshest clime. After lying about a week in San Pedro, we got under way for San Diego, intending to stop at San Juan, as the southeaster season was nearly over, and there was little or no danger.
Arrived at Santa Barbara, and on the following Wednesday slipped our cable and went to sea, on account of a southeaster. Returned to our anchorage the next day. We were the only vessel in the port. The Pilgrim had passed through the Canal and hove-to off the town, nearly six weeks before, on her passage down from Monterey, and was now at the leeward.
They were what he fully expected to behold as soon as the southeaster ceased to whip the Gulf, the Bluebird and the Blackbird, Jack MacRae's two salmon carriers. They were walking up to Squitty in eight-knot boots.
A chill darkness hid distant shore lines and mountain ranges which had stood plain in the moon-glow, a darkness full of rushing, roaring wind and thundering seas. Poor Man's Rock was a vague bulk in the gloom, forlorn and lonely, hidden under great bursts of spray as each wave leaped and broke with a hiss and a roar. MacRae braced himself against the southeaster.
There is only One who can see the winds of heaven, or who can tell when a hurricane is to begin, or where it will end. Still, a man isn't like a whale or a porpoise, that takes the, air in his nostrils, and never knows whether it is a southeaster or a northwester that he feeds upon.
Sometimes a "southeaster" blows up from the Japan Current, or Black Stream, as the Japanese call the warm, dark-blue waters that pour out of the China Sea. This current of the Pacific Ocean flows along our coast in a mighty river a thousand miles wide, and gives California its peculiar climate of cool summers and moist, warm winters.
But the southeaster abated, and the usual northwest wind came out again, and we sailed steadily down into the roadstead of Monterey Bay. This is shaped somewhat like a fish hook, the barb being the harbor, the point being Point Pinos, the southern headland.
Inside another hour there was no doubt that we were in for a southeaster. It is not nice to leave a warm bed and get out of a bad anchorage in a black blowy night, but we arose to the occasion, put in two reefs, and started to heave up. The winch was old, and the strain of the jumping head sea was too much for it. With the winch out of commission, it was impossible to heave up by hand.
Ralph, who was assisting to reeve a new block at the foretop, saw that the fog was almost at hand. But before it came a change of wind; preceding which, as the southeaster died, there were a few moments of calm.
We left the ship about noon, but owing to a strong head wind, and a tide which here runs four or five knots, did not get into the harbor, formed by two points of the island, where the boats lie, until sundown. No sooner had we come-to, than a strong southeaster, which had been threatening us all day, set in, with heavy rain and a chilly air.
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