d expected; and now, the next thing to find out was whether she
was still leaking, or whether what she contained had all drained into
her during the time when she lay hove down on her beam-ends. This could
be done by patiently waiting some few hours, and then sounding the well
again. Or it could be done equally effectively by pumping the hooker
dry, and then seeing whether any more water drained into her. It was
vitally necessary to restore her to her normal condition of buoyancy as
speedily as might be, in view of a possible recurrence of bad weather.
But the same contingency rendered it almost, if not quite, as necessary
to bend and set a sufficient amount of canvas to put the ship under
control; and the first question to be settled was: Which should I first
undertake? I considered the matter for a minute or two, and came to the
conclusion that the pumping out of that three and a half feet of water
would leave my hands in such a blistered and raw condition that they
would be practically useless for such work as bending sails; so I
determined to undertake the latter job first, especially as there was of
course the chance that the weather might continue fine after the
springing up of a breeze, in which event, if the brig were under canvas,
she would be making headway during the operation of pumping her out.

I was under the impression that on the preceding night I had detected
the presence of what might prove to be a sail-locker abaft the after
bulkhead of the cabin, so I now descended with the object of further
investigating. My surmise proved well founded, for when I opened the
door in the bulkhead there lay a whole pile of sails before me, each
sail neatly stopped, and many of them apparently quite new. I had come
to the conclusion that I would bend the fore-topmast staysail first, and
after a great deal of laborious work in turning over the various bundles
of canvas I came to what I was searching for, but not until I had
previously encountered new fore and main-topsails, which I managed, with
considerable difficulty, to drag on deck.

The bending of the staysail was no very serious matter; it simply meant
letting go the halliards, dragging upon the downhaul, cutting the
boltrope away from the hanks, passing the new seizings, hoisting the
sail foot by foot until I had got all the seizings finished, bending the
sheets afresh, and there we were.

But to bend a topsail, single-handed, was a much more difficult jo