First of all I got a strong gang to work at the pumps in two relays, each taking a spell of ten minutes pumping, followed by an equal length of time for rest. When I had fairly started these, and saw the water gushing in a clear stream from the spouts of both pumps, I set the rest to work cutting away all the rigging which still held the wreckage of the masts attached to the hull, leaving the fore and fore-topmast stays untouched, my intention being that the drift of the hull should bring the wreckage under the bows, where, being held fast by the stays, it should form a sort of floating anchor to which the ship should ride head to wind and sea. Thus we might hope that she would no longer ship water in such quantities as to threaten her safety. After nearly an hour's hard labour we succeeded, during which it appeared to me that the men were making little or no impression upon the amount of water in the hold. But, as I had hoped, when once we had brought the hull head to wind she no longer shipped water in any very alarming quantities; and after watching her carefully for some minutes I came to the conclusion that we might safely venture to open the after hatchway and supplement the efforts of those at the pumps by baling with buckets. Before starting the pumps I had taken the precaution of having the well sounded, with the result that we had discovered the depth of water in the ship's interior to be three feet ten inches, as nearly as could be ascertained; but the violent motions of the hull had rendered anything like really accurate sounding an impossibility, and the same cause now precluded us from ascertaining with certainty whether the leak was gaining upon the pumps or _vice-versa_. One thing was perfectly certain, and that was that if the pumps were gaining upon the leak at all, it was but slowly. If that should prove to be the case, it would mean that there was something the matter more serious than the mere straining of the ship; possibly a butt or a hood-end had been started. It was by this time close upon midnight, and there were times when I almost succeeded in persuading myself that it was not blowing quite so hard as it had been, although the difference--if difference there were-- was certainly not very strongly marked; the sea, however, still continued to rise, and was now running higher than I had ever before seen it. Yet the poor, sorely battered _Dolphin_ rode it reasonably well, all things considered; although there were times when the water in her interior, happening to become concentrated in the fore part of her just as she should be rising to a sea, pinned her down by the head to a dangerous extent, causing the sea to come in, green, unbroken, and like a miniature mountain, over her bows. When this threatened to occur it became necessary to watch her narrowly, and if the danger seemed to be imminent we hurriedly replaced the after hatches, otherwise we should very quickly have been swamped.