Finding this attempt useless, I at once hauled the oar inboard again, and proceeded to ship the rudder, which task I at length accomplished, with some difficulty owing to the violent motion of the boat; then I shipped the tiller; and next proceeded to loose the boat's canvas, with the idea of beating back to the ship. But here again I found myself seriously hampered and delayed by the circumstance that, when equipping the boat, the men had only half done their work. The boat was rigged as a fore and aft schooner, setting a main trysail, fore trysail, and a staysail secured to the head of the stem; and while the masts had been stepped and the shrouds set up hand-taut, I found, upon casting loose the sails, that they had omitted to obey my instructions to close-reef them, and since the wind was still blowing altogether too hard for the boat to carry anything more than close-reefed canvas I lost quite ten minutes in reefing and setting the mainsail and staysail--I dared not attempt to set the foresail also, for I did not believe that the boat could carry it. And when at length I had got the canvas set and the boat fairly under way, I found, to my consternation, that I had driven a good half-mile to leeward of the ship, by which time, their quarrel, I suppose, being over, the men had left the forecastle and, finding that I had gone adrift in the longboat, were making frantic signs to me to return. But I soon discovered that, even now, with the boat under canvas, to beat back to the ship was an impossibility; for the boat had not been built for sailing to windward in a strong breeze; she was the ordinary type of ship's longboat, constructed to carry a heavy load in proportion to her dimensions, with a long, flat floor, bluff bows, and with only some three inches of exposed keel; and while she might possibly, with skilful management, have been made to work to windward in very moderate weather, she now, with so strong a wind and so heavy a sea to battle with, drove to leeward almost as rapidly as she forged ahead. Nor did I dare to press her with any more canvas, for she was already showing more than was at all prudent, the stronger puffs careening her to her gunwale and taxing my seamanship to the utmost to prevent her from filling. Under such circumstances, with the boat demanding my utmost vigilance to keep her afloat, it will be readily understood that I was only able at intervals to cast a momentary glance toward the ship to see how she was faring, and even then it was not always possible for me to catch a glimpse of her because of the mountainous seas that interposed themselves between her and me. At length, however, when I had been adrift about half an hour, I got a chance to take a fairly long look to windward at a moment when the longboat was hove up on the crest of an unusually lofty wave; but the ship was nowhere to be seen; nor did I again catch sight of her, or even of the raft; and the only conclusion