and it was
soon produced. It was a full can, and had never been opened; therefore
I gave instructions that, instead of drawing the bung, it should be
punctured with a sufficient number of holes to allow the oil to ooze
through pretty freely. This done, I instructed the men to clear away
the longboat's painter and to bend it securely round the boat's oars in
such a manner as to make a sort of sea-anchor of them, leaving about a
fathom of the end of the painter clear to which to bend on the oil-can.
Then, when everything was ready, I shouted to Simpson in the gig,
telling him what I proposed to do, and giving him his instructions,
after which we in the longboat hauled down the jib, and, watching our
opportunity, rounded-to, threw overboard our sea-anchor, with the oil-
can attached, and took in our remaining canvas. This business of
rounding-to was a very delicate and ticklish job, for had the sea caught
us broadside-on we must inevitably have been capsized or swamped; but we
were fortunate enough to do everything at precisely the right moment,
with the result that the two boats swung round, head-on to the sea,
without accident, and without shipping very much water.

The oars, lashed together in the middle, and kept squarely athwartships
by means of a span, afforded, after all, only the merest apology for a
sea-anchor, and barely gave just sufficient drag to keep the boats stem-
on to the sea without appreciably retarding their drift to leeward; but
it was none the worse for this, since, with their drift scarcely
retarded, they rode all the more easily; and presently, when the oil
began to exude from the can and diffuse itself over the surface of the
water, there was a narrow space just ahead of us where the seas ceased
to break, with the result that in the course of ten minutes we were
riding quite dry and comfortable, except for the scud-water that came
driving along. This, however, we soon remedied by converting our
mainsail into a kind of roof, strained over the lowered mast, similar to
the arrangement in the gig, after which, save for the extravagant leaps
and plunges of the boats, which were very trying to the wounded, we had
not much to complain of.

The gale reached its height about four o'clock on the following morning,
at which hour it was blowing very hard, with an exceedingly heavy and
dangerous sea, in which the boats could not possibly have lived but for
the precautions which had been taken for their p