Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
It is true, a great deal remained to be stowed; the deck being littered, and the hold, the ground-tier excepted, in great confusion. But our bread, water, beef, pork, and other eatables, were all there, and in abundance; and, though not to be had for the asking, they were still to be had. The sails were bent, and the only anchor, la Pauline's stream, with her two largest kedges, was on our bows.
Under these circumstances nothing remained but to warp off again to a safe distance, and to secure the boats as well as they could for the night. This was effected by eight o'clock, and Captain Truck gave the order to let go two additional kedges, being determined not to strike adrift in the darkness, if it was in his power to prevent it.
Jasper, who had now quietly resumed the command of the Scud, busied himself, however, in heaving-up the anchors, which were lifted in succession; the kedges that backed them were weighed, and everything was got in readiness for a prompt departure, as soon as the state of the weather would allow.
His first orders, therefore, when all hands were mustered, were for the boats to get in the kedges and the stream anchor, and otherwise to prepare to move the vessel. In the mean time other gangs were busy in getting the rigging over the mast-heads, and in setting it up.
It was covered by the netting commonly used; and about this a number of volunteer assistants clung, restraining the balloon whilst the aëronaut made all his little arrangements. The car was a small wicker basket; its cargo consisted of a few bags of sand for ballast, a barometer, and a couple of small kedges with lines to match.
Six parts of a hawser were bent to the kedges, three to each, and these parts were held at equal distances by pieces of spars ingeniously placed between them, the whole being kept in its place by regular stretchers that were lashed along the hawsers at distances of ten feet, giving all the parts of the ropes the same level.
From the rocks, or the place where the kedges were laid to a point within thirty feet of the ship, these chains were dotted with living beings crawling cautiously upward. It was even easy, at a second look, to perceive that they were men stealthily advancing on their hands and feet. Raising the handspike, Mr. Blunt struck the chains several violent blows.
By heaving upon them, and cutting away the bower anchor, the ship was gotten afloat, where Captain Cook and his men lay for some time in the greatest anxiety, expecting every minute that either the kedges would come home, or the hawsers be cut in two by the rocks. At length, the tide ceased to act in the same direction: upon which the captain ordered all the boats to try to tow off the vessel.
Simple and ingenious as was this theory, however, as yet there was little evidence of its being reduced to practice. The drift continued; though, as the kedges and hawsers with which the anchors were backed took the strains, it became sensibly less. At length the man at the lead announced the joyful intelligence that the anchors had ceased to drag, and that the vessel had brought up!
Aided by the rake of the stern of an old-fashioned Philadelphia-built ship, nothing was easier than to veer upon the cable, let the vessel drop in to the island, until the kedges actually hung over the rocks, and then lower the last down. All this was done, and the raft was reserved for other purposes.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking