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Updated: June 3, 2025
On the Wednesday following, the pilot of the Ninna reported his westing to be 650 leagues; and he of the Pinta 630; in all of which they had reckoned short, having sailed right before the wind, but Columbus refrained from setting them right, lest he might increase the dismay of the people, by letting them know how far they were from land.
On the 14th and 15th we were beating to the westward with a light and variable wind. Our progress was slow, the monsoon being light; we therefore stood to the northward, to find a more steady breeze, and in order, whilst making our westing, to get some soundings over a large dotted space in the chart, bearing the name of the Great Sahul Shoal.
"We'll have to clean up for'ard, or we'll be having the sticks about our ears," the mate said, already starting to depart. "Get the men along, Mr. Mellaire, and call out the carpenter." And no westing! We have been swept back three degrees of casting since the night our visitors came on board. They are the great mystery, these three men of the sea. "Horn Gypsies," Margaret calls them; and Mr.
Sackett announced to me that we had made no westing to speak of, on account of the ship now being in the southeasterly set of the Agullas current. We had drifted along with the topsail and two staysails drawing from the main, and a sort of trysail set from a preventer-stay leading aft.
At noon on our second day out, running right before the north-east by east wind all the while and making but little southing, with our royals and studding-sails set, and everything that could draw the Esmeralda averaging nearly ten knots an hour every time we hove the log from the time of our clearing the Bristol Channel we had reached the meridian of 12 degrees 15 minutes west; for Captain Billings wisely took advantage of such a favourable breeze, as I've remarked before, to get well to windward of the French coast, knowing well that we might shortly meet with westerly winds of a variable nature that would probably put us quite as far to the eastward as we should want in the event of our making too much westing.
Oh, I know now this Great West Wind that blows for ever around the world south of 55. And I know why the chart-makers have capitalized it, as, for instance, when I read "The Great West Wind Drift." And I know why the Sailing Directions advise: "Whatever you do, make westing! make westing!" And the West Wind and the drift of the West Wind will not permit the Elsinore to make westing.
Two tins of salmon were left, and in the course of the day she battered holes in them and drained the liquid. She had no time to waste in extracting the meat. A current was setting to the westward, she made westing whether she made southing or not. In the early afternoon, standing upright in the canoe, she sighted Hikueru. Its wealth of cocoanut palms was gone.
He, in turn, was haunted by one thought of action, a sailing direction for the Horn: Whatever you do, make westing! make westing! It was an obsession. He thought of nothing else, except, at times, to blaspheme God for sending such bitter weather. Make westing! He hugged the Horn, and a dozen times lay hove to with the iron Cape bearing east-by-north, or north-north-east, a score of miles away.
He expired without giving any details. For several days things went along in about the same course. I took our position every morning with my crude sextant; but the results were always most unsatisfactory. They always showed a considerable westing when I knew that we had been sailing due north. I blamed my crude instrument, and kept on. Then one afternoon the girl came to me.
He did not want to see that knife descend. But he felt it for one great fleeting instant. And in that instant he remembered Cruchot and what Cruchot had said. But Cruchot was wrong. The knife did not tickle. That much he knew before he ceased to know. Whatever you do, make westing! make westing! Sailing directions for Cape Horn.
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