t been so providentially
relieved. It is true, Marble made light of the present state of things,
which, compared to those into which he had been so suddenly
launched,--without food, water, or provisions, of any sort,--was a species
of paradise. Nevertheless, no time was to be wasted; and we had a long
road to travel in the boat, ere we could deem ourselves in the least safe.

My two associates had got the launch in as good order as circumstances
would allow. But it wanted ballast to carry sail hard, and they had felt
this disadvantage; particularly Neb, when he first got the boat on a wind.
I could understand, by his account of the difficulties and dangers he
experienced,--though it came out incidentally, and without the smallest
design to magnify his own merits,--that nothing but his undying interest
in me, could have prevented him from running off before the wind, in
order to save his own life. An opportunity now offered to remedy this
evil, and we went to work to transfer all the effects I had placed on the
stage, to the launch. They made a little cargo that gave her stability at
once. As soon as this was done, we entered the boat, made sail, and hauled
close on a wind, under reefed luggs; it beginning to blow smartly
in puffs.

I did not part from the raft without melancholy regrets. The materials of
which it was composed were all that now remained of the Dawn. Then the few
hours of jeopardy and loneliness I had passed on it, were not to be
forgotten. They still recur vividly to my thoughts with deep, and, I
trust, profitable, reflections. The first hour after we cast off, we stood
to the southward. The wind continuing to increase in violence, and the sea
to get up, until it blew too fresh for the boat to make any headway, or
even to hold her own against it, Marble thought he might do better on the
other tack,--having some reason to suppose there was a current setting to
the southward and eastward,--and we wore round. After standing to the
northward for a sufficient length of time, we again fell in with the
spars; a proof that we were doing nothing towards working our way to
windward. I determined, at once, to make fast to them, and use them as a
sort of floating anchor, so long as the foul wind lasted. We had some
difficulty in effecting this object; but we finally succeeded in getting
near enough, under the lee of the top, to make fast to one of its
eye-bolts--using a bit of small hawser, that was in the boat, for