Towards morning, some of the most resolute of the seamen, rendered desperate by thirst, went down into the hold, and found a whole water-cask, which they contrived to heave up, and it afforded a seasonable relief. All the officers and boys, who were not of the profession of seamen, had been employed that night in thrumming a sail, which was passed under the ship's bottom with good effect. The spars were raised for the foremast; the weather looked promising, and they had the prospect of a fine day;--it proved so; and they were determined to make use of it, with every possible exertion. The captain divided the ship's company, with the officers attending them, into parties, to raise the jury foremast, to heave overboard the lower deck guns,[3] to clear the wrecks of the fore and after holds, to prepare a machine for steering the ship, and to work the pumps. By night, as the leak was stopped, the after-hold was quite clear, ten chaldrons of coals having been baled out since the commencement of the gale. [Footnote 3: "While on the quivering deck, from van to rear, Broad surges roll in terrible career, Rodmond, Arion, and a chosen crew, This office in the face of death pursue. The wheel'd artillery o'er the deck to guide, Rodmond descending, claim'd the weather side. Fearless of heart, the chief his orders gave, Fronting the rude attacks of every wave. Meantime Arion traversing the waist, } The cordage of the leeward guns embraced, } And pointed crows beneath the metal placed. } Watching the roll, their forelocks they withdrew, And from their beds the reeling cannon threw. Then from the windward battlements unbound, Rodmond's associates wheel'd the artillery round; Then, hurl'd from sounding hinges o'er the side, Thundering they plunge into the flashing tide." FALCONER'S _Shipwreck_.] The standards of the cockpit, an immense quantity of staves and wood, and part of the lining of the ship, were thrown overboard, that, if the water should appear again in the hold, they might have no impediment in baling. The Diomede, in this condition, exhibited a scene seldom witnessed,--a line-of-battle ship without masts or rudder, a mere shell in the midst of the ocean. The casks of all sorts, floating from side to side, were stove, and the magazines and store-rooms of every kind washed down. By nightfall the foremast was secured, and the machine for steering fixed; so that, if the moderate weather continued, they were in hopes of steering the ship, the following day, for the coast of Brazil--the violence of the wind having driven them far out of their course.