Throughout the grim days and black nights that followed we laboured incessantly, led by the two hawsers that held us to the other ship. These hawsers had to be watched incessantly, and pieces of wood kept under the places where they came on board to prevent them from being cut. There was not a chair, or a stool, or a dry rag on board the ship. The crew spent their time praying or lamenting, and when we wanted to sleep the only place on which we could lie was the engine-room gratings, from which we got up as black as sweeps with coal-dust and grime. The seas were constantly washing over us from stem to stern, though the ship ahead had been dropping oil for three days to make things better for us. She herself was in difficulties, as we could see from the seas which continually rushed out from her water ports and scuppers. About daybreak on the fourth day a loud report sounded through the din of wind and weather, and I saw our port hawser snap close up to the towing ship. We were then, of course, towing the broken part astern, and for hours I was in dread that it would foul our propeller. Luckily the weather moderated somewhat, and the larger vessel eased up, endeavouring to drop a line down to our end of the hawser so that we might heave it aboard. Owing to the drift to leeward, however, we found it impossible to do anything in this way, so, after waiting some hours longer, the towing vessel launched a boat to bring in the end. The boat was stove in as soon as it touched the water, and it was hauled on board again only just in time to save the crew from drowning. In the meantime I started to get out one of our own small steel boats. For four hours we laboured at this task, for the steamer rolled so much that at one moment the boat would be hanging over the water quite a distance from the side, and at another threatening to knock the funnel off. In the end we managed to launch her, pick up the end of the broken hawser, connect up again, and make a fresh start. But I defy anyone who has not gone through it to realize the labour, the difficulties, and danger we went through. Tossed about by mountainous seas, expecting every moment to be capsized, to fish up a five-inch steel hawser trailing deep below the surface, and pull back with it to the towing vessel, is a labour the arduousness of which my pen is utterly unable to describe. At last we got started again, and two days later, one lovely clear morning, we arrived at Algiers, the first port of call on our voyage. Here the captain of the towing ship went ashore with me to obtain two Manila hawsers, these having more "give" and "spring" in them than wire ropes. We ransacked Algiers in vain, and accordingly cabled home for instructions. These were to the effect that the "hopper" was to be brought to England under her own steam, and I was given twenty-four hours to decide whether I would undertake the task. I made up my mind, now I had got so far, to see the thing through.