As I stood looking contemplatively at the planks it occurred to me that three of them, say, placed edge to edge, and reared upright on the boat’s deck, would catch quite an appreciable amount of wind, and no sooner had the idea suggested itself to me than I got to work. My first act was to take one of the planks and saw off an end two feet six inches in length. This piece I next sawed into six equal strips, or battens, a task which occupied me much longer than I had anticipated, chiefly on account of the limited space in which I was obliged to work, and because I had nothing but the boat’s gunwale to steady the plank against. But I got my six battens at last, and four of them I nailed at equal intervals of about two feet three inches across three planks laid close together side by side, while I nailed a fifth athwartships on the deck at the point where I intended to rear my planks. The length of the battens being three inches more than the combined width of the three planks, the projecting ends of the top batten afforded me a very convenient shoulder for the support of my shrouds and stay, which I cut from my coil of line.
Having got these all fixed and seized, I reared my structure on end against the deck batten, with the assistance of Julius and the two stewardesses, set up the shrouds and stay, nailed another batten in front of the contraption, to keep it in place, and behold! I had a mast and sail in one, twelve feet long and two feet three inches wide, capable of catching and holding quite an appreciable amount of wind. That this was actually the case at once became apparent, the boat’s speed quickly rising to about three knots, while she did not now lose way when she sank into the trough of the sea.
I was so pleased with the success of my experiment that I immediately began to elaborate the original idea. My new scheme was to saw one of the planks into very thin veneer-like sheets, nail them together at the edges, and make veritable sails out of them; but an hour’s work sufficed to convince me that to saw a three-inch plank into even quarter-inch boards with an ordinary handsaw demanded far more skill in carpentry than I possessed.
The afternoon and night passed quietly; and shortly after sunrise the feminine members of the party made their appearance. Upon enquiry I was informed that they had all passed a comfortable night and slept well. They were quite cheerful and courageous; indeed, I was amazed to see how quickly and thoroughly they all adapted themselves to circumstances, although, in the case of Mrs Vansittart and her daughter at least, this was their first experience of anything in the nature of real hardship.
We breakfasted early that morning, all of us declaring ourselves to be more than ready for the meal. Then we experienced a most unpleasant shock, for upon serving out the first allowance of water for the day, we discovered that our stock had suffered a further mysterious depletion during the night, which, upon investigation, proved to be due to a leaky breaker. The leak was not a very serious one, certainly, and the staves seemed to be taking up a bit and the leak growing less; still, we had lost about three pints, which was half a pint apiece, and it was not difficult to picture conditions under which this might make all the difference to us between life and death.
The day passed like the night, uneventfully. The breeze held steady, and we continued to blow along northward, Mrs Vansittart and her daughter taking spell and spell at the steering oar while I endeavoured to make up my arrears of sleep. Of course a sharp look-out was maintained, in the hope that either a sail or land might be sighted; but although the air was crystal-clear the horizon remained bare throughout its entire circle. Toward nightfall the wind manifested a tendency to drop, and shortly after midnight it fell dead, so that when Julius aroused me at two o’clock in the morning I found the boat heaving gently upon an oil-smooth swell.
This calm, if it should last for any length of time, would be nothing short of a disaster. It was of vital importance that we should find either a ship or a shore capable of providing us with sustenance within the next four or five days, or we should all be subjected to the horrors of starvation. I positively dreaded to think of what might be the effect of this upon the women; therefore, that we might not lie there absolutely helpless, I started to scull the boat with the steering oar. But she was heavy for this style of propulsion, and I estimated that our progress did not amount to more than three-quarters of a mile per hour.