“We sounded the well, and the captain ordered us again to the pumps.  These were on deck between the logs, which were crashing about.  We couldn’t work the pumps, as there was seven feet of water in there on deck.  The second mate spoke to the captain that it would be best to start the steam pump.  The smokestack and the rest of the steam fittings were under the fo’c’s’le head.  It took a long time to get them out, and then the steam pump would not work.  The water gained on us all the time now, and the captain ordered us to throw the deck-load overboard.  We were nearly dead, we were so tired and sleepy and sore.  This morning, the cook served coffee and bread when daylight came at six o’clock.  That was the last bit of food or drink we had on the El Dorado.

“The taking off of the great chain was a murderous job.  When we loosened it, the huge seas would sweep over the logs and us while we tried to get them overboard.  It was touch and go.  We had to use capstanbars to pry the big logs over and over.  We tried to push them with the rolling of the ship.  One wave would carry a mass of the logs away, and the next wave would bring them back, crashing into the vessel, catching in the rigging, and nearly pulling it down, and the masts with it.  Dodging those big logs was awful work, and if you were hit by one, you were gone.  They would come dancing over the side on the tops of the waves and be left on the very spot from which we had lifted them overboard.  The old man should have thrown the deck-load over two days before.  The water now grew deeper all the time, and the ship wallowed like a waterlogged raft.  The fo’c’s’le was full of water.  The El Dorado was drowning with us aboard.

“We were all on deck because we had nowhere else to go.  There was nothing in the cabin or the fo’c’s’le but water.  The sea was now like mountains, but it stopped breaking, so that there was a chance to get away.  We were hanging on to stays and anything fixed.

“The captain now gave up hope, as we had long ago.  He ordered all hands to make ready to lower the one boat we had left, and to desert the ship.  We had a hard time to get this boat loose from the spanker-stay, and we lowered it with the spanker-tackle.  Just while we were doing that, a tremendous wave swept the poop, with a battering-ram of logs that had returned.  Luckily, the boat we were lowering escaped being smashed, or we had all been dead men now.

“We filled a tank with twenty-five gallons of water from the scuttle-butts and carried it to the boat.  The old man ordered the cook and the boy to get some grub he had in a locker in his cabin, high up, where he had put it away from the flood.  The cook and the boy were scared stiff, and when they went into the cabin, a sea came racing in, and all saved was twenty pounds of soda crackers, twelve one-pound tins of salt beef, three of tongue, thirty-two cans of milk, thirty-eight of soup, and four of jam.