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, formed my principal stock.  To this I added a pot of butter, with some capital smoked herrings, and some anchovies.  We lived well in the cabin of the Dawn, and there was no difficulty in making all the provision that six or eight men would have needed for a month.  Perceiving that the raft, now it was relieved from the weight of the sails and rigging, was not much affected by the stores, I began to look about me in quest of anything valuable I might wish to save.  The preparations I had been making created a sort of confidence in their success; a confidence (hope might be the better word) that was as natural, perhaps, as it was unreasonable.  I examined the different objects that offered, with a critical comparison of their value and future usefulness, that would have been absurd, had it not afforded a melancholy proof of the tenacity of our desires in matters of this nature.  It is certainly a sad thing to abandon a ship, at sea, with all her appliances, and with a knowledge of the gold that she cost.  The Dawn, with her cargo, must have stood me in eighty thousand dollars, or even more; and here was I about to quit her, out on the ocean, with an almost moral certainty that not a cent of the money could be, or would be, recovered from the insurers.  These last only took risks against the accidents of the ocean, fire included; and there was a legal obligation on the insured to see that the vessel was properly found and manned.  It was my own opinion that no accident would have occurred to the ship, in the late gale, had the full crew been on board; and that the ship was not sufficiently manned was, in a legal sense my own fault.  I was bound to let the English carry her into port, and to await judgment,—­the law supposing that justice would have been done in the premises.  The law might have been greatly mistaken in this respect; but potentates never acknowledge their blunders.  If I was wronged in the detention, the law presumed suitable damages.  It is true, I might be ruined by the delay, through the debts left behind me; but the law, with all its purity, cared nothing for that.  Could I have shown a loss by means of a falling market, I might have obtained redress, provided the court chose to award it, and provided the party did not appeal; or, if he did, that the subsequent decisions supported the first; and provided,—­all the decrees being in my favour,—­my Lord Harry Dermond could have paid a few thousands in damages:—­a problem to be solved, in itself.

I always carried to sea with me a handsome chest, that I had bought in one of my earlier voyages, and which usually contained my money, clothes and other valuables.  This chest I managed to get on deck, by the aid of a purchase, and over the ship’s side, on the raft.  It was much the most troublesome task I had undertaken.  To this I added my writing-desk, a mattress, two or three counterpanes, and a few other light articles, which it struck me might be of use—­but, which I could cast into the sea at any moment, should it become necessary.  When all this was done, I conceived that my useful preparations were closed.