Page:Colnett - Voyage to the South Pacific (IA cihm 33242).djvu/33

 the North Eat, a trong wind and great well carried us to Madeira in ix days; on one of which alone we had fair weather. On the twentieth I had run that ditance by two of Arnold's time-pieces and account: it alo blew a trong gale, very variable, with dark cloudy weather and heavy rain. I had not made any obervation this day to be relied on, but uch as pointed out to me the like was not far ditant, and that it became abolutely neceary for me to acertain our true ituation before night. I depended on the qualities of the hip for clearing the land if caught on a lee-hore, and accordingly hortened ail to cloe-reefed main-top-ail and fore-ail. We then hove too and houed our boats: but we had no ooner bore up, than, half a mile on the lea-beamlee-beam [sic], we decried the Deerters Rocks: and as it was impoible to weather them on the tack we were then on, we wore and tretched out between Porto Sancto and the Eat end of Madeira; while it blew o heavy at intervals, that the hip lurched three treaks of the main-deck under water: at the ame time, he made a better way through the water than we could expect or would generally be believed. When the gale had ceaed, calms, light winds, and baffling weather, prevented our clearing the Wet end of Madeira, until the evening of the twenty-econd of January.

My preent intention was to pas in light to the Wetward of the Canaries; and at noon, on the twenty