He is very fair-skinned, and I noticed this
afternoon, when he was pulling on a brace, that the sleeves of his
oil-skins, assisted by the salt water, have chafed his wrists till
they are raw and bleeding and breaking out in sea-boils. Mr.
Mellaire tells me that in another week there will be a plague of
these boils with all hands for'ard.
"When do you think we'll be up with the Horn again?" I innocently
queried of Mr. Pike.
He turned upon me in a rage, as if I had insulted him, and positively
snarled in my face ere he swung away without the courtesy of an
answer. It is evident that he takes the sea seriously. That is why,
I fancy, he is so excellent a seaman.
The days pass--if the interval of sombre gray that comes between the
darknesses can be called day. For a week, now, we have not seen the
sun. Our ship's position in this waste of storm and sea is
conjectural. Once, by dead reckoning, we gained up with the Horn and
a hundred miles south of it. And then came another sou'west gale
that tore our f ore-topsail and brand new spencer out of the belt-
ropes and swept us away to a conjectured longitude east of Staten
Island.
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