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Not until January fourteenth, seven weeks since the wreck, did we come up with a warmer latitude. Even then it was not really warm. It was merely not so bitterly cold. Here the fresh westerlies forsook us and we bobbed and blobbed about in doldrummy weather for many days.
Could a high-altitude jet-stream wind have been blowing the smoke cloud? Futch had checked this no. The winds above 20,000 feet were the usual westerlies and the jet stream was far to the north. Several months later I talked to a captain who had been at Luke when this sighting occurred. He knew the F-84 pilot and he'd heard him tell his story in great detail.
Though islands may be stepping-stones between the Old World and the New, they have not been the bringers of civilization. That function in the history of man has been left to the winds. The westerlies, however, which are the prevailing winds in the latitude of the United States and Europe, have not been of much importance.
So that the following week saw us on the south side of the tropic of Capricorn, the south-east trade done, and the dirty weather and variable squalls, which nearly always precede the "westerlies," making our lives a burden to us. Here, however, we were better off than in an ordinary merchantman, where doldrums are enough to drive you mad.
There was not one of us who did not know secret satisfaction at the occurrence of each death. Luckiest of all was Israel Stickney in casting lots, so that in the end, when he passed, he was a veritable treasure trove of clothing. It gave a new lease of life to the survivors. We continued to run to the north-east before the fresh westerlies, but our quest for warmer weather seemed vain.
We found the nor'-east Trades with little seeking; strong Trades, too, that lifted us to the Line almost before the harbour dust was blown from our masts and spars. There calms fell on us for a few days, but we drifted south in the right current, and in less than forty days had run into the "westerlies" and were bearing away for the Horn.
That, it seemed to him, must be the final disposition of this problem which his father and Horace Gower and Elizabeth Morton had set for him years before he was born. There came a burst of afternoon westerlies which blew small hurricanes from noon to sundown. But there was always fishing under the broad lee of the cliffs.
We had thought the ponies on the port side to be pretty safe, but two of them seem to me to be groggy, and I doubt if they could stand more heavy weather without a spell of rest. I pray there may be no more gales. We should be nearing the limits of the westerlies, but one cannot be sure for at least two days.
Tim had driven starving, rickety sheep across his native plains when the earth's surface had been powdered to red sand and driven by shrivelling westerlies in travelling sandhills from mirage to summer mirage. Tim was used to hot places. That is why he became a stretcher-bearer for his company in Gallipoli, and transferred to the regimental bombers when they reached France.
At noon the barograph curve turned up and the wind moderated, the sky gradually clearing. To-night it is fairly bright and clear; there is a light south-westerly wind. It seems rather as though the great gales of the Westerlies must begin in these latitudes with such mild disturbances as we have just experienced.
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