"The captain now gave up hope, as we had long ago. He ordered all hands
to make ready to lower the one boat we had left, and to desert the
ship. We had a hard time to get this boat loose from the spanker-stay,
and we lowered it with the spanker-tackle. Just while we were doing
that, a tremendous wave swept the poop, with a battering-ram of logs
that had returned. Luckily, the boat we were lowering escaped being
smashed, or we had all been dead men now.

"We filled a tank with twenty-five gallons of water from the
scuttle-butts and carried it to the boat. The old man ordered the
cook and the boy to get some grub he had in a locker in his cabin,
high up, where he had put it away from the flood. The cook and the
boy were scared stiff, and when they went into the cabin, a sea came
racing in, and all saved was twenty pounds of soda crackers, twelve
one-pound tins of salt beef, three of tongue, thirty-two cans of milk,
thirty-eight of soup, and four of jam.

"We went into the boat with nothing but what we wore, and that was
little. Some of us had no coats, and some no hats, and others were
without any shoes. We were in rags from the terrible fight with the
logs and the sea. The old man went below to get his medicine-chest. He
threw away the medicine, and put his log and the ship's papers in
it. He took up his chronometer to bring it, when a wave like that
which got the cook and the boy knocked the skipper over and lost the
chronometer. All he got away with was his sextant and compass and
his watch, which was as good as a chronometer.

"We got into the boat at four o'clock. The boat had been put into
the water under the stern and made fast by a rope to the taffrail. We
climbed out the spankerboom and slid down another rope. The seas were