ushed the spars through their
respective caps with a foot. Of course, I was obliged to get into the
water to work; but I had thrown aside most of my clothes for the occasion,
and the weather being warm, I felt greatly refreshed with my bath. In two
hours' time, I had my top-gallant-mast and yard well secured to the
top-rim and the caps, having sawed them in pieces for the purpose. The
fastenings were both spikes and lashings, the carpenter's stores
furnishing plenty of the former, as well as all sorts of tools.

This part of the arrangement completed, I ate a hearty breakfast, when I
began to secure the hatches, as a sort of floor, on my primitive joists.
This was not difficult, the hatches being long, and the rings enabling me
to lash them, as well as to spike them. Long before the sun had reached
the meridian, I had a stout little platform, that was quite eighteen
inches above the water, and which was surrounded by a species of low
ridge-ropes, so placed as to keep articles from readily tumbling off it.
The next measure was to cut all the sails from the yards, and to cut loose
all the rigging and iron that did not serve to keep the wreck together.
The reader can easily imagine how much more buoyancy I obtained by these
expedients. The fore-sail alone weighed much more than I did myself, with
all the stores I might have occasion to put on my platform. As for the
fore-top-sail, there was little of it left, the canvass having mostly
blown from the yard, before the mast went.

My raft was completed by the time I felt the want of dinner; and a very
good raft it was. The platform was about ten feet square, and it now
floated quite two feet clear of the water. This was not much for a sea;
but, after the late violent gale, I had some reason to expect a
continuation of comparatively good weather. I should not have been a true
seaman not to have bethought me of a mast and a sail. I saved the
fore-royal-mast, and the yard, with its canvass, for such a purpose;
determining to rig them when I had nothing else to do. I then ate my
dinner, which consisted of the remnants of the old cold meat and fowls I
could find among the cabin eatables.

This meal taken, the duty that came next was to provision my raft. It took
but little time or labour. The cabin stores were quite accessible; and a
bag of pilot-bread, another of that peculiarly American invention, called
crackers--some smoked beef, a case of liquors, and two breakers of water,