The dead pirates were flung overboard but the bodies of seven brave British seamen were wrapped in sailcloth to be committed to the deep on the morrow, with a round shot at their feet and a prayer to speed their souls. There were men enough to work the ship but she was in a situation indescribably forlorn. It was possible to patch and shore the cabin house and make a refuge, even to find place for the wretched women who were lifted unharmed out of the lazarette. But the stout ship, her mainmast gone by the board, the deck ravaged by that infernal catapult of an errant gun, the hull pounded by the floating wreckage of spars, would achieve a miracle should she see port again.
The combat with the pirates and their overthrow had been waged in the last hour before the gray night closed over a somber sea. God's mercy had caused the wind to fall and the waves to diminish in size else the ship would have gone to the bottom ere dawn. Much water had washed down into the hold through the broken cargo hatch and the gaps where the runaway gun had torn other fittings away. The carpenter sounded the well and solemnly stared at the wetted rod by the flicker of his horn lantern. The ship was settling. It was his doleful surmise that she leaked where the pounding spars overside had started the butts. It was man the pumps to keep the old hooker afloat and Captain Wellsby ordered his weary men to sway at the brakes, watch and watch.
Joe Hawkridge and Jack Cockrell, more fit for duty than the others, put their backs into it right heartily while the sailors droned to the cadence of the pump a sentimental ditty which ran on for any number of verses and began in this wise:
"As, lately I traveled toward Gravesend, I heard a fair Damosel a Sea-man commend: And as in a Tilt-boat we passed along, In praise of brave Sea-men she sung this new Song, _Come Tradesman or Marchant, whoever he be, There's none but a Sea-man shall marry with me!_"
Thus they labored all the night through, men near dead with fatigue whose hard fate it was to contend now with pirates and again with the hostile ocean. The skipper managed to stay the foremast and to bend steering sails so that the ship was brought into the wind where her motion was easier. The sky cleared before daybreak and the rosy horizon proclaimed a fair sunrise. How far and in what direction the _Plymouth Adventure_ had been blown by the storm was largely guesswork. By means of dead reckoning and the compass and cross-staff, Captain Wellsby hoped to work out a position but meanwhile he scanned the sea with a sense of brooding anxiety.