For
we were by this time reduced to so helpless a condition, that out of two
hundred and odd men who remained alive, we could not, taking all our
watches together, muster hands enough to work the ship on an emergency,
though we included the officers, their servants, and the boys.
The wind being northerly when we first made the island, we kept plying
all that day and the next night, in order to get in with the land; and
wearing the ship in the middle watch, we had a melancholy instance of the
most incredible debility of our people; for the lieutenant could muster
no more than two quarter-masters and six foremast men capable of working;
so that without the assistance of the officers, servants, and boys, it
might have proved impossible for us to have reached the island after we
had got sight of it; and even with this assistance they were two hours in
trimming the sails. To so wretched a condition was a 60-gun ship reduced,
which had passed Straits le Maire but three months before, with between
four hundred and five hundred men, almost all of them in health and
vigour.
EVEN GRASS A DAINTY.
However, on the 10th, in the afternoon, we got under the lee of the
island, and kept ranging along it at about two miles' distance, in order
to look out for the proper anchorage, which was described to be in a bay
on the north side. But at last the night closed upon us before we had
satisfied ourselves which was the proper bay to anchor in, and therefore
we resolved to send our boat next morning to discover the road.
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