the ship into some harbour, as a thing not to be doubted, and as hands could be spared from the pumps, they were employed in getting up the anchors:  The stream anchor and best bower we had taken on board; but it was found impossible to save the little bower, and therefore it was cut away at a whole cable; we lost also the cable of the stream anchor among the rocks; but in our situation these were trifles which scarcely attracted our notice.  Our next business was to get up the fore top-mast, and fore-yard, and warp the ship to the south-east, and at eleven, having now a breeze from the sea, we once more got under sail and stood for the land.

It was however impossible long to continue the labour by which the pumps had been made to gain upon the leak, and as the exact situation of it could not be discovered, we had no hope of stopping it within.  In this situation, Mr Monkhouse, one of my midshipmen, came to me and proposed an expedient that he had seen used on board a merchant ship, which sprung a leak that admitted above four feet water an hour, and which by this expedient was brought safely from Virginia to London; the master having such confidence in it, that he took her out of harbour, knowing her condition, and did not think it worth while to wait till the leak could be otherwise stopped.  To this man, therefore, the care of the expedient, which is called fothering the ship, was immediately committed, four or five of the people being appointed to assist him, and he performed it in this manner:  He took a lower studding sail, and having mixed together a large quantity of oakum and wool, chopped pretty small, he stitched it down in handfuls upon the sail, as lightly as possible, and over this he spread the dung of our sheep and other filth; but horse dung, if we had had it, would have been better.  When the sail was thus prepared, it was hauled under the ship’s bottom by ropes, which kept it extended, and when it came under the leak, the suction which carried in the water, carried in with it the oakum and wool from the surface of the sail, which in other parts the water was not sufficiently agitated to wash off.[81] By the success of this expedient, our leak was so far reduced, that instead of gaining upon three pumps, it was easily kept under with one.  This was a new source of confidence and comfort; the people could scarcely have expressed more joy if they had been already in port; and their views were so far from being limited to running the ship ashore in some harbour, either of an island or the main, and building a vessel out of her materials to carry us to the East Indies, which had so lately been the utmost object of our hope, that nothing was now thought of but ranging along the shore in search of a convenient place to repair the damage she had sustained, and then prosecuting the voyage upon the same plan as if nothing had happened.  Upon this occasion I must observe, both in justice and gratitude to the ship’s company, and the gentlemen on board, that although in the midst of our distress every one seemed to have a just sense of his danger, yet no passionate exclamations, or frantic gestures, were to be heard or seen; every one appeared to have the perfect possession of his mind, and everyone exerted himself to the uttermost, with a quiet and patient perseverance, equally distant from the tumultuous violence of terror, and the gloomy inactivity of despair.[82]