The work went slowly forward--it could not be otherwise with men so utterly exhausted as were the little moiety of the _Wasp's_ crew who survived that desperate fight, many of them smarting with the wounds that they had received--and meanwhile the weather grew ever more threatening, stimulating us all to exertions of which I am confident we should have been utterly incapable under more placable circumstances. Not that there was very much to find fault with at the moment, for it was not exactly blowing hard; but the gusts, which for the last hour or more had been sweeping over us, now from this quarter and anon from that, were steadily growing more frequent and stronger, while the sky had become black as night.  But before night actually fell we had made shift to pump the schooner dry, the hatches were battened down, the skylight and companion openings had been protected, after a fashion, and we had cleared away the wreck of the mainmast, saving the spar and all attached; and, having done this, the men declared that they must have a meal and some rest before they could again turn-to.  And I felt that their claim was just; for indeed they had done wonders, taking all things into consideration.  I had not the heart to spur them to further effort just then, for I had worked with them and, therefore, knew from personal experience how utterly exhausted they must feel, and how impossible it would be to get further useful work out of them until they had rested for an hour or two.  Indeed, there did not appear to be any good and sufficient reason why I should call upon them for more hard work just then.  It is true that much that I intended to do still remained undone, the most important task of all being the getting up of something in the nature of a jury rig; but, short-handed as we now were, that would prove a very formidable task--much too formidable and too protracted to justify the hope that it could be accomplished before the expected gale came; and as I considered the question, and talked it over with Henderson and the boatswain, it seemed that if it could not be completed beforehand, it would really be better on the whole to defer it until after the gale had blown over; I, therefore, gave the order to knock off work and get supper and a rest.  Two minutes later the decks were deserted, save by myself, and I was bracing myself up to keep a lookout as best I might.