134< cook's FIRST VOYAGE JUNE, 



labour by which the pumps had been made to gain 

 upon the leak; and as the exact situation of it could 

 not be discovered, we had no hope of stopping it 

 within. In this situation, Mr. Monkhouse, one of 

 my midshipmen, came to me, and proposed an expe- 

 dient that he had once seen used on board a mer- 

 chant-ship, which sprung a leak that admitted above 

 four feet water an hour, and which, by this expe- 

 dient, was brought safely from Virginia to London ; 

 the master having such confidence in it, that he took 

 her out of harbour, knowing her condition, and did 

 not think it worth while to wait till the leak could 

 be otherwise stopped. To this man, therefore, the 

 care of the expedient, which is called fother- 

 ing the ship, was immediately committed, four or five 

 of the people being appointed to assist him, and he 

 performed it in this manner : he took a lower stud- 

 ding sail, and having mixed together a large quantity 

 of oakum and wool, chopped pretty small, he stitched 

 it down in handfuls upon the sail, as lightly as pos- 

 sible, and over this he spread the dung of our sheep 

 and other filth ; but horse-dung, if we had had it, 

 would have been better. When the sail was thus pre- 

 pared, it was hauled under the ship's bottom by 

 ropes, which kept it extended, and when it came 

 under the leak, the suction w r hich carried in the 

 water, carried in with it the oakum and wool from 

 the surface of the sail, which in other parts the water 

 was not sufficiently agitated to wash off. By the suc- 

 cess of this expedient our leak was so far reduced, 

 that instead of gaining upon three pumps, it was 

 easily kept under with* one. This was a new source 

 of confidence and comfort ; the people could scarcely 

 have expressed more joy if they had been already in 

 port ; and their views were so far from being limited 

 to running the ship ashore in some harbour, either of 

 an island or the main, and building a vessel out of 

 her materials to carry us to the East Indies, which 

 had so lately been the utmost object of our hope, that 



