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every effort the sea had found passage in great strong streams, yet they held to the last ;and when the ship rolled back, Boatswain Marsham cried out : —

“Now, Master Carpenter, quick! Bring great nails and hammer and a plank or two. Yare, yare!”

“Yea, yea,” the carpenter cried, and came running down the deck.

The men held the planking and the carpenter drove home the nails and thus they made the plank fast along the timbers behind the gap, where it would serve to brace the stuffing. Between the plank and the stuffing they forced a great mass of other wadding, and though the ship rolled ever so deeply the plank held against the sea. They left it so; but all that night, which seemed as long as any night they had ever seen, no man slept in the Rose of Devon, for they still feared lest the sea should batter away the plank and work their undoing.

All night long they kept the pumps going and all night long they feared their labour would be lost. But at four in the morning one of the pumps sucked, which gave them vast comfort, and at daybreak they gave thanks to God, who had kept them safe until dawn.

The storm had passed and the sky was clear, and Phil and Martin met at sunrise.

"Since thou hast haled me out of the sea by the hair of my head,” quoth Martin, after the manner of one who swallows a grievance he can ill stomach, "I must e’en give thee good morrow.”