to us an endless night, day broke; the
atmosphere was gloriously bright and clear, the wind had dropped to a
fine topgallant breeze, and the sea had gone down sufficiently to allow
of our commencing operations; as, therefore, we had no breakfast to get
or anything else to detain us, we started at once; and all hands were
soon busy cutting adrift the spars, knotting and splicing cordage, and
in other ways forwarding the work as actively as possible under the
circumstances. We found, however, that we had a long and, from lack of
sufficient timber, a difficult job before us; and as the morning wore on
it was made additionally so by the appearance of several ravenous sharks
close to us, which were only restrained from making an attack by an
incessant splashing maintained by all hands except the half-dozen we
could spare to get on with the work.

At length--it was getting well on in the afternoon, by the appearance of
the sun--when, in despite of all our difficulties, we were beginning to
bring our raft into something like shape, we were suddenly startled from
our work by the hoarse cry of "Sail ho!" raised by one of the men; and,
lifting our eyes from our work, we waited until we rose to the top of a
wave, when there she was, sure enough, a large ship apparently, under
topsails, approaching us from the southward and westward, and only about
five miles distant. A hearty cheer was at once raised by all hands at
this unexpected prospect of rescue; and then we went to work once more
with renewed vigour and activity to establish a means of making our
presence known, as we felt convinced that, though she was heading
straight for us, we had not yet been discovered by her.

It will be remembered that, when making preparations for the gale, we
had sent down our topgallant and royal-yards. When the project of
cutting away the masts to serve as a last retreat for the crew had been
carried out, somebody had had the forethought to get these spars
overboard and secured to the wreck of the foremast; and in subsequently
planning our raft it had been our intention to get the topgallant-yard
on end to serve as a mast, with the sail as our means of propulsion
through the water. Our plans were not carried out to such a stage of
completeness as this when the strange sail hove in sight, and all our
energies were now employed to get this part of the work done forthwith;
as I felt convinced that, lying so low in the water as we were, we might