sameness.  Unfortunately this breeze met me in the bows; for I had stepped my mast in the foremast, lashed it against the bottom of the top, which it will be remembered was now perpendicular, and stayed it to the mast-heads and dead-eyes of the top-mast rigging, all of which remained as when erect, though now floating on the water.  I intended the fractured part of the foremast for my cut-water, and, of course, had to ware ship before I could gather any way.  This single manoeuvre occupied a quarter of an hour, my braces, tacks, and sheets not working particularly well.  At the end of that time, however, I got round, and laid my yard square.

Chapter XXIII.

“There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture; they looked, as they had heard of a world ransomed, or one destroyed:  A notable passion of wonder appeared in them; but the wisest beholder, that knew no more but seeing, could not say, if the importance were joy, or sorrow;—­but in the extremity of the one, it must needs be.”

  Winter’s Tale.

As soon as the raft got fairly before the wind, and the breeze had freshened, I had an opportunity of ascertaining what it would do.  The royal was a large one, and it stood well.  I had brought a log-line and the slow-glass with me, as well as my quadrant, slate, &c., and began to think of keeping a reckoning.  I had supposed the ship to be, when it fell calm, about two hundred miles from the land, and I knew her to be in latitude 48 deg. 37’’.  The log-line told me, the raft moved through the water, all that forenoon, at the rate of about half a knot in the hour; and could I keep on for fifteen or sixteen days, in a straight course, I might yet hope to get ashore.  I was not so weak, however, as to expect any such miracle to be wrought in my favour, though, had I been in the trades, the thing might have occurred.  By cutting adrift the two yards, or by getting them fore and aft, in a line with the water, my rate of sailing might be doubled; and I began seriously to think of effecting this great change.  Cut the yards adrift I did not like to do, their support in keeping me out of water being very important.  By hauling on the lift, I did get them in a more oblique position, and in a measure thus lessened their resistance to the element.  I thought that even this improvement made a difference of half a knot in my movement.  Nevertheless, it was tedious work to be a whole hour in going less than a single mile, when two hundred remained to be travelled, and the risks of the ocean were thus constantly impending over one!

What a day was that!  It blew pretty fresh at one time, and I began to tremble for my staging, or deck, which got washed several times, though the top-sail-yard made for it a sort of lee, and helped to protect it.  Towards the decline of the day, the wind went down, and at sunset everything was as tranquil as it had been the previous evening.  I thought I might have been eight or nine miles from the spot where the Dawn went down, without computing the influence of the currents, which may have set me all that distance back again, or so much further ahead, for anything I knew of the matter.  At sunset I took an anxious survey of the horizon, to see if any sail were in sight; but nothing was visible.