However, we
were spared any further experience on the point; for the next day,
when we must have been near the Cape of Pillars, which is the
south-west point of the mouth of the straits, a gale set in from the
eastward, with a heavy fog, so that we could not see half of the
ship's length ahead. This, of course, put an end to the project, for
the present; for a thick fog and a gale blowing dead ahead are not the
most favorable circumstances for the passage of difficult and
dangerous straits. This weather, too, seemed likely to last for some
time, and we could not think of beating about the mouth of the straits
for a week or two, waiting for a favorable opportunity; so we braced
up on the larboard tack, put the ship's head due south, and struck her
off for Cape Horn again.
CHAPTER XXXII
ICE AGAIN--A BEAUTIFUL AFTERNOON--CAPE HORN--"LAND HO!"--HEADING
FOR HOME
In our first attempt to double the Cape, when we came up to the
latitude of it, we were nearly seventeen hundred miles to the
westward, but, in running for the straits of Magellan, we stood so far
to the eastward, that we made our second attempt at a distance of
not more than four or five hundred miles; and we had great hopes, by
this means, to run clear of the ice; thinking that the easterly gales,
which had prevailed for a long time, would have driven it to the
westward.
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