Page:In the Lena Delta - 1885.djvu/100

68 But to keep the head of our little craft to the sea we must resort to the drag, or sea-anchor. If a parachute be made and so loaded as to sink properly below the surface of the water, and a rope be attached which passes through or is fastened to the bow of the boat, it can plainly be seen how the parachute, if of sufficient area, will, as it drags slowly through the water, keep the head of the boat toward the sea. The boat, catching the wind, is hurried along, and would soon be turned sideways and rolled over like a log were it not for the anchor, which gently but firmly resists the furious tugging of the would-be suicide. Should the drag from any cause float to the surface, or the rope break, its efficacy is at once lost, and doubtless also the boat; or, if it hangs perpendicularly under the boat when a sea rushes upon it, the drag will become an additional weight for the bow to lift, failing in which the boat's head will be buried; perhaps the stern, too. It should be borne in mind that a sea-anchor is drawn through the water after the manner of an aerial parachute dropped weighted from a balloon.

So now, not only the propriety of making one, but its size and weight, became momentous questions with us, since in our party of eleven there were none who had lain with a drag in an open boat; and those I had seen on steamers during the war could give me no adequate idea of the kind now required in our emergency. Hence I had nothing to rely upon but my good judgment, though I listened attentively to the many authorities around me, even if I did not seek their opinion. Jack Cole, my main prop as a seaman, declared that the drag would come home on us if not weighted more than it was. Cole and Manson made it, I having selected the canvas. Danenhower, seated beside me in the stern sheets, held the end of the boat-fall, and so singled the three anchor ropes, preserving an equality of strain on the three corners of the drag. Leach (seaman) was steering, and I, as before