The Voyage Travelers round the Horn had, for the most part, to look to their own little world for means of keeping themselves occupied over long periods of time. Their ship was a self-contained unit, their universe bounded by an unlimited expanse of sea and sky. Her eager eyes dance in the sunlight and you tell yourself you have never met anyone so gentle and fair . . . She has become a vixen and a shrew . . During these first days the Argonaut's morale was frequently at its lowest ebb of the entire voyage.
Some journals pass over the ordeal in complete and eloquent silence.
In the dim recesses below decks conditions were about as bad as could be imagined. With all but a few incapacitated, little attempt was made to clean up the litter, to care for the sick, or even to secure and lash down the passengers' belongings which in the haste of departure had been piled on disorderly heaps both above and below decks. The victims lay clinging weakly to their slanting bunks while trunks, boxes, valises, and anything else movable slid from side to side with each roll of the ship, and the prostrate ones wondered, without really caring, if their straining vessel would survive the next shuddering lunge into the oncoming seas.