midday
To this task , accordingly , I addressed myself immediately after breakfast , first taking the precaution to most carefully sound the well . The result of this preliminary operation was so far reassuring that I found a depth of just three feet six inches of water , the merest trifle more than the rod had showed forty-eight hours before , thus demonstrating that the hull was once more practically as tight as a bottle . Thus encouraged , I got to work at the pump , working steadily and systematically , exerting my strength to the best advantage , and sparing my hands as far as possible by enwrapping the handle first in canvas and then in a strip of a blanket taken from one of the forecastle bunks . It was terribly back-breaking work -- this steady toil at the pumps , and when midday arrived and I knocked off to get a meridian altitude of the sun , wherefrom to compute our latitude , I was pretty well exhausted ; but I had my reward in the discovery that I had reduced the depth of water in the hold by nearly eight inches -- thus showing that , after all , the quantity of water was not nearly so formidable as it had at first seemed , existing indeed only in the more or less inconsiderable spaces not occupied by the cargo . After tiffin I again went to work , and toiled steadily on until sunset , by which time I had reduced the depth by a further six inches , at the same time fatiguing myself to the point of exhaustion . And all through this day of toil I had been maintaining a most anxious watch upon the weather , without detecting any disquieting sign whatever ; it is true that the wind strengthened somewhat -- sufficiently , in fact , to bring the brig 's speed up to close upon five knots , but this was the reverse of alarming , especially as the sky remained clear . But when at length we sat down to dinner that evening , I found that the mercury still manifested a disposition to sink .