arrangement the
regularity would be broken, and each of us would get the benefit of the
first dog-watch in succession, which seemed to be not only a fair but a
desirable thing.

To keep a night watch, however, without possessing the means to attract
the notice of a passing ship, would be useless. I therefore constructed
a sort of framework consisting of four twelve-foot planks, which I set
up on edge in the form of a square enclosure on the after extremity of
the poop, securing them firmly to the deck planking by means of battens.
The planks were nine inches wide, consequently when my work was
complete I had a kind of open box twelve feet square and nine inches
deep in which to light my flare. But something was needed to protect
the deck from the action of the fire; my next act, therefore, was to
nail together a sort of light raft, consisting of six fifteen-foot
planks laid side by side and secured to each other by cross battens, the
forward ends being bevelled to reduce the resistance to the raft's
passage through the water. Then I fixed up an arrangement on each side
of the raft whereby, with the aid of rowlocks, I could work a pair of
sculls and so propel the raft through the water. This job took me two
days to complete, but when it was done I had a raft that would sustain
not only my own weight but something to spare. I placed upon it a
couple of wash-deck tubs, put a shovel in one of them, and paddled
myself ashore to the small sandbank about half a mile away.

As I rowed away from the wreck, standing up to my work and facing
forward, fisherman fashion, I took a rather wide sweep, whereby I was
enabled to obtain a good view of her. A pitiful sight she presented,
bereft of her three masts, with her jib-boom snapped short off, odds and
ends of rigging trailing overboard, a great gap in her starboard
bulwarks, and the fair whiteness of her hull disfigured here and there
with rust streaks. She sat with a list to starboard, and was a trifle
down by the head, from which latter circumstance I concluded that her
forefoot and bottom forward were the most seriously damaged parts of
her, as, indeed, it was only reasonable to suppose, seeing that she must
have hit the reef stem-on. But, oh! it was distressing to look at that
still beautiful though dishevelled hull and reflect that she had been
brought to her present lamentable condition by pure negligence.

The raft travelled more easily through the water than I had