In
this condition they plotted to seize the vessel, and procured some
weapons through the agency of their surgeon. Spencer, the captain's
clerk, betrayed them to the captain of the Andromeda, and, after that,
the hatches were barred down, and they began to think that they would
all die of suffocation. The sentence pronounced upon them was that
they should be allowed only half a pint of water a day for each man,
and barely food enough to sustain life.
Their condition would have been terrible, but, fortunately for them,
they were lodged upon the water casks, over which was constructed a
temporary deck. By boring holes in the planks they managed, by means
of a proof glass, to obtain all the water they needed.
Between them and the general's store room was nothing but a partition
of plank. They went to work to make an aperture through which a man
could pass into this store room. A young man named Howard from Rhode
Island was their instigator in all these operations. They discovered
that one of the shifting boards abaft the pump room was loose, and
that they could ship and unship it as they pleased. When it was
unshipped there was just room for a man to crawl into the store
room. "Howard first went in," writes Captain Fanning, "and presently
desired me to hand him a mug or can with a proof glass. A few minutes
after he handed me back the same full, saying 'My friends, as good
Madeira wine as ever was drank at the table of an Emperor!'
"I took it from his hands and drank about half a pint.
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