What are Captain West's duties? So far he has done
nothing, save eat three times a day, smoke many cigars, and each day
stroll a total of one mile around the poop. The mates do all the
work, and hard work it is, four hours on deck and four below, day and
night with never a variation. I watch Captain West and am amazed.
He will loll back in the cabin and stare straight before him for
hours at a time, until I am almost frantic to demand of him what are
his thoughts. Sometimes I doubt that he is thinking at all. I give
him up. I cannot fathom him.
Altogether a depressing day of rain-splatter and wash of water across
the deck. I can see, now, that the problem of sailing a ship with
five thousand tons of coal around the Horn is more serious than I had
thought. So deep is the Elsinore in the water that she is like a log
awash. Her tall, six-foot bulwarks of steel cannot keep the seas
from boarding her. She has not the buoyancy one is accustomed to
ascribe to ships. On the contrary, she is weighted down until she is
dead, so that, for this one day alone, I am appalled at the thought
of how many thousands of tons of the North Atlantic have boarded her
and poured out through her spouting scuppers and clanging ports.
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