At length a compromise
was effected, and a middle course, of shifting the ends and backs at
every lay, was adopted, which worked well, and which, though they held
it inferior to their own, each party granted was better than that of
the other.
Having filled the ship up, in this way, to within four feet of her
beams, the process of steeving commenced, by which an hundred hides
are got into a place where one could not be forced by hand, and
which presses the hides to the utmost, sometimes starting the beams of
the ship, resembling in its effects the jack-screws which are used
in stowing cotton. Each morning we went ashore, and beat and brought
off as many hides as we could steeve in the course of the day, and,
after breakfast, went down into the hold, where we remained at work
until night. The whole length of the hold, from stem to stern, was
floored off level, and we began with raising a pile in the after part,
hard against the bulkhead of the run, and filling it up to the beams,
crowding in as many as we could by hand and pushing in with oars; when
a large "book" was made of from twenty-five to fifty hides, doubled at
the backs, and put into one another, like the leaves of a book.
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