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Our carpenter surveyed her, and pronounced her capable of refitting, and in a few days the owners came down from the Pueblo, and, waiting for the high spring tides, with the help of our cables, kedges, and crew, got her off and afloat, after several trials.
While this was in train, the two jolly-boats took in lines and kedges, of which, luckily, they had one that was brought from the packet, besides two found in the wreck, and pulled off into the ocean. As soon as one kedge was dropped, that by which the launch rode was tripped, and the boats were hauled up to it, the other jolly-boat proceeding on to renew the process.
The fish-tackle was got up, fish-davit rigged out, and after two or three hours of hard and cold work, both the anchors were ready for instant use, a couple of kedges got up, a hawser coiled away upon the fore-hatch, and the deep-sea-lead-line overhauled and got ready.
Of course, he says, `if there's any of you as is anxious to have him for skipper, and wants to go heavin' out cargo and runnin' away kedges, and what not, under his orders, instead of goin' ashore with me into them woods, huntin' for fruit, he's quite at liberty to do so, I won't say him nay; but you may as well make up your minds now as any other time whether you'll stick to him or to me; so now what d'ye say, shipmates who's for Carter, and who's for Tonkin?
These kedges lay on the poop, where they were habitually kept, and two men had no great difficulty in getting them over the stern, suspended by stoppers. Now Mark had ascertained that the rock of the Reef rose like a wall, being volcanic, like all the rest of the formation, and that the ship could float almost anywhere alongside of it.
Two kedges were got on deck, and hawsers were bent to them; the inner ends of the hawsers were bent, in their turns, to the crowns of the anchors, and everything was got ready to throw them overboard at the proper moment. These preparations completed, Jasper's manner changed from the excitement of exertion to a look of calm but settled concern.
Notwithstanding the facility with which the kedges were got ashore, it took Mark and Bob quite half a day to plant them in the rock precisely where they were wanted. When this was accomplished, however, it was so effectually done as to render the hold even greater than that of the sheet-anchor.
As soon as the boats were at liberty, and before the chain had been got ashore, two kedges were carried to the reef, and laid among the rocks, in such a way that their flukes and stocks equally got hold of the projections. To these kedges lighter chains were secured; and when all the bights were hove-in, to as equal a strain as possible.
At fifteen minutes past three P.M. on the 30th, a light air of wind springing up from the eastward, we weighed, and, having warped out by kedges till we had cleared the shoal-point of the cove, made sail for the channel, and, with the assistance of the boats, got the Fury into the fair set of the tide before it made very strong to the eastward.
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