e else could the leak be
discovered. Yet the water was still coming in and required unremitting
labor to keep it under. It was then suggested by Wylie, and the opinion
gradually gained ground, that some of the seams had opened in the late
gale and were letting in the water by small but numerous, apertures.

Faces began to look cloudy; and Hazel, throwing off his lethargy, took
his spell at the main pump with the rest.

When his gang was relieved he went away, bathed in perspiration, and,
leaning over the well, sounded it.

While thus employed, the mate came behind him, with his cat-like step,
and said, "See what has come on us with your forebodings! It is the
unluckiest thing in the world to talk about losing a ship when she is at
sea."

"You are a more dangerous man on board a ship than I am," was Hazel's
prompt reply.

The well gave an increase of three inches. Mr. Hazel now showed excellent
qualities. He worked like a horse; and, finding the mate skulking, he
reproached him before the men, and, stripping himself naked to the waist,
invited him to do a man's duty. The mate, thus challenged, complied with
a scowl.

They labored for their lives, and the quantity of water they discharged
from the ship was astonishing; not less than hundred and ten tons every
hour.

They gained upon the leak--only two inches; but, in the struggle for
life, this was an immense victory. It was the turn of the tide.

A slight breeze sprung up from the southwest, and the captain ordered the
men from the buckets to make all sail on the ship, the pumps still going.

When this was done, he altered the ship's course and put her right before
the wind, steering for the island of Juan Fernandez, distant eleven
hundred miles or thereabouts.

Probably it was the best thing he could do, in that awful waste of water.
But its effect on the seamen was bad. It was like giving in. They got a
little disheartened and flurried; and the cold, passionless water seized
the advantage. It is possible, too, that the motion of the ship through
the sea aided the leak.

The _Proserpine_ glided through the water all night, like some
terror-stricken creature, and the incessant pumps seemed to be her poor
heart, beating loud with breathless fear.

At daybreak she had gone a hundred and twenty miles. But this was
balanced by a new and alarming feature. The water from the pumps no
longer came up pure, but mixed with what appeared to be blood.

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