Finn then called a council: Cutbill, myself, Dowling, and Head gathered round him, and very briefly and with but little talk we concerted our plans. We were all agreed that the astonishing shell-armoured fabric could be made to yield us a tolerably secure asylum, and that the elevation of its deck would enable us to command a wide view of the sea, and that therefore it was our business forthwith to convey all that we could recover from the yacht into her. I went to work with the rest and toiled hard. The labour mainly consisted in dragging and pulling, for we had to bring a spare boom to the galleon from the beach to serve as a derrick for hoisting; then such sails as had been washed ashore; then the provisions. It was like drawing teeth; everything seemed to weigh about five times more than it should. The work was made the harder, moreover, by the character of the ground. Had the surface been smooth as earth is we could have tramped with tolerable briskness; but our staggering march to the galleon under heavy loads was converted into a very treadmill exercise by our having to dodge the little holes large enough to neatly fit the leg to as high as the knee, or the wider yawns and great wells of which some were big enough to receive the whole body of us, goods and all, in one gulp. I had by this time ascertained that the water in the larger pores and holes was too salt to drink. It was in the smaller hollows only, and these indeed amongst the shallowest, that the water lay scarce brackish. In short, the fall of rain, great as it was, had not lasted long enough to drown the brine in the deeper wells. This was an important discovery, for the fierce sun would soon dry up the shallow apertures; and had we taken for granted that the contents of the deeper ones were fit to drink, we should have been brought face to face with thirst. But happily nearly the whole of the yacht lay in piecemeal before us. All that had been in her forepart, which yet stood, had washed out and rolled ashore or stranded within wading distance. Our fresh water had been carried in casks, as I believe was the custom for the most part in those days; some of the barrels had bulged, but a few had been swept high and dry. There were empty water casks, moreover, which had floated up, and these we rolled aside to be filled the moment we had leisure to devote to that task. There were no bodies to be seen, and I was thankful for it. The sharks no doubt had been put to flight by the explosion, but they would not be long in returning; and indeed I gathered they were in force again, though I saw nothing resembling a fin, from the circumstance of none of the dead, saving the few forms which Cutbill and Dowling had slipped into the sea on the other side of the island, having drifted in with the wreckage.