Yet, excepting the watch, he kept every man so busy as might be, some bringing weed to keep up a fire which he had lit near the boat; one to help him turn and hold the batten upon which he labored; and two he sent across to the wreck of the mast, to detach one of the futtock shrouds, which (as is most rare) were made of iron rods.

Then the bo'sun laid the unfinished batten along with them, and we lowered the boat again over all, trusting to its weight to prevent any creature from meddling with aught.

From the time of getting on the rocks she had leaked considerably, and a large quantity of stores had been destroyed or damaged, there being at one time four feet of water in the hold; but by nailing battens and tarred blankets over the open seams the leaks had been greatly reduced.

Now, the first matter to which I bent attention, was the raising, to the top of the hill, of the remaining half of that portion of the topmast which the bo'sun had split in twain to procure the batten for the boat.

In the meanwhile, he continued to shape the batten until it was a very good and true fit according to his liking.

With infinite precaution Barnett picked out an object that looked like a 22- calibre short cartridge, wadded some cotton batten in his hand, set the thing in the wadding, laid it on the rock, carefully returned the small box to the large box and the large box to the boat, took up the cartridge again and waded back to the cliff.