it upon a plan which he
thought might succeed. We had a few barrels of oil on board, and one of
these he broached for the purpose of testing his idea. He had a canvas
bag made, capable of containing about four gallons of the oil, and this
bag he filled, bent its closed end on to a rope, and threw the affair
overboard, paying out the rope, as the brigantine drifted to leeward,
until we had about a hundred fathoms of line out, with our bag about
that distance to windward.

"We soon found that the oil, exuding through the pores of the canvas,
had a distinctly marked effect upon the sea, which ceased to break as
soon as it reached the film of oil that had oozed from the bag. Still
the effect was by no means as great as he desired, the oil not exuding
in sufficient quantity to render the sea safe for a boat, so we hauled
our bag inboard again, punctured it well with a sailmaker's needle, and
then tried it again. It now proved to be everything that could be
desired; the oil oozed out of the bag in sufficient quantity to make a
smooth patch of water with a diameter fully equal to the length of our
ship; and, after testing the matter through the whole afternoon, we all
came to the conclusion that our boats would live in such a patch, and
that the experiment was quite worth trying. Wherefore three bags were
made, one for each boat, and attached by a becket to a length of line
measuring about twenty fathoms. Then, when night had set in, and the
darkness had become deep enough to conceal our movements, the bags were
filled and dropped overboard, the other end of the line being made fast
to the ringbolt in the stern of the boat for the use of which it had
been destined. A party of thirty men was told off--ten to each boat,
with four additional to take the boat back to the ship in the event of
our venture proving successful,--and the brigantine was then sailed to a
position about a mile ahead and half-a-mile to windward of the
_Manilla_; that being the ship that we had marked down for our prey.
The great difficulty that we now anticipated was that of unhooking the
falls with certainty and promptitude the moment that the boats should
reach the water; but our captain provided for that by slinging the boats
by strops and toggles attached to the ordinary fall-blocks. We were now
all ready to put the matter to the test; but at the last moment the
captain suddenly decided that it was too early, and that it would be
better to defer