the carpenter, was
given the task of temporarily securing the various openings in the deck
against the possible influx of water--both the skylight and the
companion having been completely wrecked by shot; the third party, under
Pearce, the boatswain, devoting itself to the task of clearing away the
wreck of the spars, and securing as much as possible of the wreckage in
order that we might have the wherewithal to give the schooner a jury rig
that would enable us to take her into port. The pirate schooner,
meanwhile, had continued to run away to leeward upon a course that would
carry her to the northern coast of Hayti in a few hours.

The work went slowly forward--it could not be otherwise with men so
utterly exhausted as were the little moiety of the _Wasp's_ crew who
survived that desperate fight, many of them smarting with the wounds
that they had received--and meanwhile the weather grew ever more
threatening, stimulating us all to exertions of which I am confident we
should have been utterly incapable under more placable circumstances.
Not that there was very much to find fault with at the moment, for it
was not exactly blowing hard; but the gusts, which for the last hour or
more had been sweeping over us, now from this quarter and anon from
that, were steadily growing more frequent and stronger, while the sky
had become black as night. But before night actually fell we had made
shift to pump the schooner dry, the hatches were battened down, the
skylight and companion openings had been protected, after a fashion, and
we had cleared away the wreck of the mainmast, saving the spar and all
attached; and, having done this, the men declared that they must have a
meal and some rest before they could again turn-to. And I felt that
their claim was just; for indeed they had done wonders, taking all
things into consideration. I had not the heart to spur them to further
effort just then, for I had worked with them and, therefore, knew from
personal experience how utterly exhausted they must feel, and how
impossible it would be to get further useful work out of them until they
had rested for an hour or two. Indeed, there did not appear to be any
good and sufficient reason why I should call upon them for more hard
work just then. It is true that much that I intended to do still
remained undone, the most important task of all being the getting up of
something in the nature of a jury rig; but, short-handed as we now were,
that