Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1925-02-01

berth on freiEhter sail
ing for the farthest spot
on the wild. far-southern end of
South America, Of all lands that one
hears or read of the most afflicted
and desolate. Because ] loved the
cold and dissolution and the wilder
ness? II is hard to say.
Tales of adventure and shipwreck.
of month-long battles with the wind
and sea to round the Horn, of noun
tain seas half a mile between their
crests numbering eternally on granite
shores, have woven about that region
of the sailors graveyard the spirit
stirring glamour of the terrible.
And yet how little is known of that
region. The clerk at book store to
whom I applied for map of TERRA
del Fuego looked at me with superior
disdain and said he'd never heard of
It No, 1t is not to landsmen that one
should turn for knowledge of the
world, for, after all, their world is
but those cIuttered portions of the
globe that obstruct like reefs the
great broad highway of the sea. So
IN a little store near the water front
in New York l found at once what l
had sought, and on charts of the sea
learned, inversely as it were, and to
the precise detail of contour that
only mariners charts possess what
was not sea but land
And had the spirit of adventure not
been stirred by the records of Magel-
Ian, TERRA del Fuego and Cape Horn,
there IS cold print and naked por-
tent appeared such names as Famine
Beach, Desolation Bay and Last Hope
Inlet, while, suggestive of yet other
terrors, stood warnings to ship
wrecked mariners against the savage
natives of the coast. Here was in
II confirmation q the CLAM
curious worst that legend had related
of that region, and as such it clinched
my will to go.
We sailed. We cleared the Hook,
the land dropped down, the hard hori-
Zon of the sea encircled US. My life
became a memory and the future
broke against our PROV and SHIN
fered and was foam, and trailed be-
hind us In the steamers wake.
There was no measure of the time
but days and nights, and the passage
of these was forgotten in the content
ment of their monotony or concealed
in the illusion of swiftly changing
seasons as from the Springtime of the
North the steamer bore us southwark
through six weeks and 1000 miles.
through the Midsummer of the equa-
tor to the July Winter of the Strait
of Magellan.
OF the third officer of the ship. with
whom less, perhaps, a friendship than
close partnership in adventure
came to be shared, something must
at once be said.
NLE YTTEROCK was born in
" Trondhjem, Norway. At II he
went to sea on a sailing ship under
his father. That father appears to
have been a skipper of the grand old
SchOO1 tTyhp
hards hip. proposed by hardship to
make a man Of ole. After standing a
few months of beating, the boy de-
sertet in some foreign port. For
years after that Ole's life was marked
by similar adventure, although the
order and number of his assertions,
the dialogue Of foreign seaports
with which the debaucheries OF his
stolel freedom made him familiar,
have escaped my memory.
On the night of my arrival aboard
the ship YtteroCk was the officer on
duty. When some one Informed him
of my destination and purpose. He s
crazy had been his comment. Three
days later, at his own suggestion, we
had become partners in the enterprise.
But l have no money to pay you"
said.
81 wouldn't let you pay me-" he an
swered.
And so, with heads together, we
pored over the charts, and, discuss
ing every impossibility of adventure,
hit up a plan that was both prac-
ticable and alluring. We'd get a life
boat, deck it and rig 1t with a mast
and sail, and laying our course from
fhe Strait of Magellan through the
Intain-islanded channels west and
TERRA del Fuego, sail around
Therein lay the chance of
Ge,,- scked or drowned or eaten,
and we called it settled.
1t was a night Of mid July when
we entered the Strait of Magellan as
1.-THE King" and THE Duke" Most