In obedience to this Law of the Sea, the four-masted ship Shenandoah starboarded a point, passing the Fuller well to windward, and some five miles south of the Island of Diego Ramirez.
CHAPTER IX
[INTO THE PACIFIC]
After close to two and a half months at sea we had reached the turning point on the long course to Honolulu. The Atlantic with its trials lay behind us, and just in our wake the sullen waters of the Horn lashed themselves against the coast of Terra Del Fuego. Ahead stretched the broad Pacific, greatest of oceans, and fraught with every angle of adventure that comes to the men who sail. Indeed the sailing of a great ship like the Fuller is the rarest kind of sport from the standpoint of seamanship, where every stitch of canvas is made to draw to its full capacity in every wind that blows. From the cold latitudes of the Cape up to abreast of Valparaiso, we had good lively sailing. Great rollers followed us, for the winds were mostly fair, and, as the seas overtook us and expended themselves to the north, we drove onward, cutting down the latitude in record time; the cape pigeons were left behind, but several albatross formed a convoy almost to the edge of Capricorn.
During these weeks of strenuous weather a favored few of us were told off to lay up sennet for use in making chafing mats, and as "service" on the backstays, where subject to the wear of gear. We would perch ourselves on the coils of rope stowed on the fore hatch tarpaulin under the fo'c'sle head, where we were sheltered from the weather and at the same time within easy call from aft.
Frenchy was the leading sailor in these arts and taught us to lay up round, flat, and French sennet. The less skilled men busied themselves in making nettles and foxes, using the primitive "spinning jinney," and rubbing down the small stuff with canvas to "smooth" it before balling. Here, too, we were initiated into the fine points of marling spike work, Frenchy, Brenden, and Jimmy Marshall showing the less knowing ones how to turn in many a splice and knot. Turk's heads of three, five, and seven strands were made, and the more difficult series of four, six and eight strands were mastered by some of us. Jimmy worked a wonderful set of manropes for the after companion, crosspointing them in red, white and blue, and topping them with rose knots.
I was delighted to pick up a vast amount of interesting and useful knowledge about the different knots and hitches used at sea. How many sailors today can properly cast a carrick bend, turn in a mariner's splice, or a Flemish eye, or work a cringle into a Bolt rope? Hitchen, of the starboard watch, taught us how to make the English bag knot, an intricate and beautiful formation cast in the bight of a line.