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Updated: June 3, 2025
Captain Billings, seeing the wind so favourable, instead of hugging the land, determined to make all the westing he could at this the very outset of our voyage, in order to avoid the cross currents hanging about the chops of the Channel, and off the Scilly Isles which frequently, when aided by the contrary winds they engender, drive a ship on to the French coast, and into the Bay of Biscay, thus entailing a lot of beating up to the northwards again to gain a proper westerly course.
Wilson accompanied us to the mouth of the river, and there left us, bearing back our hearty good wishes for his personal prosperity and that of the mission. At 12, meridian, we have made the run to the island of St. Thomas, and are now about fifteen miles to the northward of it. The wind is still sufficiently fresh and fair to enable us to make seven knots westing; the great desideratum.
Never a day does the gray thin, or the snow-squalls cease that we do not sight ships, west-bound like ourselves, hove-to and trying to hold on to the meagre westing they possess. And occasionally, when the gray clears and lifts, we see a lucky ship, bound east, running before it and reeling off the miles. I saw Mr.
The Cordillera here, and indeed I believe throughout Chile, consist of several parallel, anticlinal and uniclinal mountain-lines, ranging north, or north with a little westing, and south.
Nor did gazing across the table at Captain Dan Cullen have any cheering effect upon him. Captain Cullen chewed and scowled and kept silent. The scowls were for God, and with every chew he reiterated the sole thought of his existence, which was make westing. He was a big, hairy brute, and the sight of him was not stimulating to the other's appetite.
"That's for going farther north," answered the Captain. "Latitude is distance from the equator, either north or south, and what a sailor makes in northing or southing he calls 'hauling in his latitude, just as making easting or westing is 'hauling in his longitude." "Thank you, Captain," said William, politely, when he had finished. "Is it all clear now?" inquired the Captain.
And now Captain Cullen went around brazenly before God, smoking a big cigar, smiling jubilantly, as if the failing wind delighted him, while down underneath he was raging against God for taking the life out of the blessed wind. Make westing! So he would, if God would only leave him alone. Secretly, he pledged himself anew to the Powers of Darkness, if they would let him make westing.
In that wild weather at the southern end of the earth, Joshua Higgins ceased washing. His grimy face usually robbed George Dorety of what little appetite he managed to accumulate. Ordinarily this lavatorial dereliction would have caught Captain Cullen's eye and vocabulary, but in the present his mind was filled with making westing, to the exclusion of all other things not contributory thereto.
"I have reflected on them, Dick," he said, "even while my thoughts have seemed to be occupied with the concerns of others. If de Vervillin is out, he must still be to the eastward of us; for, running as the tides do on the French coast, he can hardly have made much westing with this light south-west wind.
A smile of satisfaction slowly dawned on his black and hairy face. Well, anyway, he had made his westing and fooled God. Doctor Bicknell was in a remarkably gracious mood. Through a minor accident, a slight bit of carelessness, that was all, a man who might have pulled through had died the preceding night.
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