ng down
through the unplugged hole in the boat's bottom. With a muttered
objurgation of the fellow's carelessness, I climbed into the boat and,
stooping down, sought for the plug. I was seeking for perhaps two or
three minutes before I found it, but as I was about to abandon the
search, and hunt for a suitable cork out of which to cut another, my eye
fell upon the missing plug, and I at once inserted it and proceeded to
drive it tightly home. I had just completed the job to my satisfaction
when I felt the ship lurch heavily. There was a sudden, violent rush
and wash of water, and I sprang to my feet barely in time to see the
boat caught up on the crest of a sea that came sweeping, green and
solid, through the gap in the starboard bulwarks, and carried clear and
clean out through the corresponding gap in the port side! The longboat
had launched herself; and before I could collect my senses, or lift a
hand, I found myself adrift alone, some twenty fathoms to leeward of the
doomed ship, and driving farther away from her every moment.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

ALONE IN THE LONGBOAT.

To seize one of the long, heavy ash oars that formed part of the boat's
equipment, fling the blade over the stern, and jerk the oar into the
sculling notch, with the idea of sculling the boat back to the wreck
was, with me, the work of but a second or two; but although I contrived,
with some labour, to get the boat's head round toward the _Dolphin_, and
to keep it pointed in that direction, I soon discovered--as I might have
had the sense to know--that to scull a big heavy boat like the longboat
to windward against such a strong wind and so heavy a sea was a task
altogether beyond the power of a single man, however strong he might be;
for every sea that swept down upon the boat sent her surging away a good
half-dozen fathoms to leeward.

Finding this attempt useless, I at once hauled the oar inboard again,
and proceeded to ship the rudder, which task I at length accomplished,
with some difficulty owing to the violent motion of the boat; then I
shipped the tiller; and next proceeded to loose the boat's canvas, with
the idea of beating back to the ship. But here again I found myself
seriously hampered and delayed by the circumstance that, when equipping
the boat, the men had only half done their work. The boat was rigged as
a fore and aft schooner, setting a main trysail, fore trysail, and a
staysail secured to the head of the stem; and wh