“On the seventy-third day out, came the terror.  The wind is from the southeast.  There is little light.  The sea is high, and everything is in a smother.  We took down the topsails and furled the spanker.  The wind was getting up, and the call came for all hands on deck.  We had watch and watch until then.  That’s four hours off and four hours on.  When the watch below left their bunks, that was the last of our sleep on the El Dorado.  A gale was blowing by midnight.  We were working all the time, taking in sail and making all snug.  There was plenty of water on deck.  Schooner was bumping hard on the waves and making water through her seams.  We took the pumps for a spell.

“We had no sleep next day.  In the morning we set all sails in a lull, but took them down again quickly, because the wind shifted to the northwest, and a big gale came on.  Now began trouble with the cargo.  We had the hold filled with lumber, planks and such, and on the deck we had a terrible load of big logs.  These were to hold up the walls and roofs in the mines of Chile.  Many of them were thirty-six feet long, and very big around.  They were the trunks of very big trees.  They were piled very high, and the whole of them was fastened by chains to keep them from rolling or being broken loose by seas.  In moving about the ship we had to walk on this rough heap of logs, which lifted above the rails.  They were hard to walk on in a perfectly smooth sea, and with the way the El Dorado rolled and pitched, we could hardly keep from being thrown into the ocean.

“This second day of the big storm, with the wind from the northeast, the El Dorado began to leak badly again.  All hands took spells at the pumps.  We were at work every minute.  We left the ropes for the pumps and the pumps for the ropes.  We double-reefed the mizzen, and in the wind this was a terrible job.  It nearly killed us.  At eight o’clock to-night we could not see five feet ahead of us.  It was black as hell, and the schooner rolled fearfully.  The deck-load then shifted eight inches to starboard.  This made a list that frightened us.  We were all soaking wet now for days.  The after-house separated from the main-deck, and the water became six feet deep in the cabin.

“We had no sun at all during the day, and at midnight a hurricane came out of the dark.  All night we were pulling and hauling, running along the great logs in danger always of being washed away.  We had to lash the lumber, tightening the chains, and trying to stop the logs from smashing the ship to pieces.  It did not seem that we could get through the night.

“This is Friday.  When a little of daylight came, we saw that everything was awash.  The sea was white as snow, all foam and spindrift.  It did not seem that we could last much longer.  The small boat that had been hanging over the stern was gone.  It had been smashed by the combers.  We should have had it inboard, and the mate was to blame.  Now we took the other boat, the only one left, and lashed it upright to the spanker-stays.  In this way it was above the logs and had a chance to remain unbroken.