[Footnote 2: The well is an apartment in a ship's hold, serving to enclose the pumps. It is sounded by dropping a measured iron rod down into it by a long line; hence the increase or diminution of the leaks is easily discovered.
"They sound the well, and, terrible to hear, Five feet immersed along the line appear; At either pump they ply the clanking brake, And turn by turn the ungrateful office take."
They soon found their account in baling: a spare pump had been put down the fore-hatchway, and a pump shifted to the fish-room; but the motion of the ship had washed the coals so small, that they had reached every part of the ship, and these pumps were soon choked. However, the water by noon had considerably diminished by working the buckets; but there appeared no prospect of saving the ship, if the gale continued. The labour was too great to hold out without water, yet the people worked without a murmur, and, indeed, with cheerfulness. But their sufferings for want of water were very great, and many of them could not be restrained from drinking salt water. They fired many guns of distress, in hopes some of the merchant-ships might approach and give them some supply; but on the beginning of the storm they had run before the wind, and made some port on the coast of Brazil,--an example which the Diomede would have been glad to follow before the hurricane began, but her crippled state from the engagement rendered this impossible.
Towards morning, some of the most resolute of the seamen, rendered desperate by thirst, went down into the hold, and found a whole water-cask, which they contrived to heave up, and it afforded a seasonable relief.
All the officers and boys, who were not of the profession of seamen, had been employed that night in thrumming a sail, which was passed under the ship's bottom with good effect. The spars were raised for the foremast; the weather looked promising, and they had the prospect of a fine day;--it proved so; and they were determined to make use of it, with every possible exertion. The captain divided the ship's company, with the officers attending them, into parties, to raise the jury foremast, to heave overboard the lower deck guns,[3] to clear the wrecks of the fore and after holds, to prepare a machine for steering the ship, and to work the pumps. By night, as the leak was stopped, the after-hold was quite clear, ten chaldrons of coals having been baled out since the commencement of the gale.