that if the pumps were gaining upon the leak at
all, it was but slowly. If that should prove to be the case, it would
mean that there was something the matter more serious than the mere
straining of the ship; possibly a butt or a hood-end had been started.

It was by this time close upon midnight, and there were times when I
almost succeeded in persuading myself that it was not blowing quite so
hard as it had been, although the difference--if difference there were--
was certainly not very strongly marked; the sea, however, still
continued to rise, and was now running higher than I had ever before
seen it. Yet the poor, sorely battered _Dolphin_ rode it reasonably
well, all things considered; although there were times when the water in
her interior, happening to become concentrated in the fore part of her
just as she should be rising to a sea, pinned her down by the head to a
dangerous extent, causing the sea to come in, green, unbroken, and like
a miniature mountain, over her bows. When this threatened to occur it
became necessary to watch her narrowly, and if the danger seemed to be
imminent we hurriedly replaced the after hatches, otherwise we should
very quickly have been swamped.

When the pumping gangs had been at work for about an hour they
complained of exhaustion, and I accordingly relieved them to the extent
of setting them to work with the buckets and putting two fresh gangs at
the pumps; yet, although these men worked pretty energetically, it soon
became evident that we were not gaining anything upon the leak, and as
time passed on it became exceedingly doubtful whether the leak were not
rather gaining upon us. Moreover, as the sea continued to rise the
vessel's movements became more laboured, and she again began to take the
water aboard in such dangerous quantities that at length we were
reluctantly compelled to abandon our baling operations, and close the
hatches to prevent the heavy seas from reaching her interior.

In this fashion the seemingly endless night at length wore itself away
and the lowering dawn came, disclosing to us the true seriousness of our
condition. There we were, aweary, hollow-eyed, haggard-looking little
band, sodden to the very bones of us with long hours of exposure to the
pitiless buffeting of rain and sea, our flesh salt-encrusted, our eyes
bloodshot, our hands raw and bleeding with the severe and protracted
work at the pumps, adrift in mid-ocean upon a mastless, sorely bat