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208 himself with a stick, while the noise of their barking was so great that he was compelled to retreat into the hut again, for fear of awakening his jailers. The morrow, unfortunately, brought a still greater disappointment. A gale of wind had sprung up of such violence that a boat could scarcely live in the billows, and on approaching the shore, they found that all three vessels had dragged their anchors, and lay at some distance from their anchorage of the day before.

Early on the following morning they again visited the shore, and Bourne looked eagerly towards the anchorage, where all his hopes of deliverance centred. Not a vessel was in sight. Whether they had foundered, or were driven upon the shoal and wrecked, or had dragged out to sea in a disabled condition—whether his shipmates, the gale having subsided, had deliberately proceeded on their voyage, and left him a prey to cruel savages, and all the ills of this inhospitable shore—he was unable to conjecture; he only knew that they were gone, and that he was left alone to the tender mercies of the Patagonians.

Bourne was now compelled to accompany his captors on their wanderings, suffering numerous hardships, but acquiring a curious knowledge of their customs. They set out soon afterwards on a journey to the westward, keeping frequently near the coast—their object being, as they stated, to convey their prisoner to a place, the name of which sounded like "Holland," which afterwards appeared to be a corruption of the English word island. They told him that at that place there were twenty or thirty white men, and plenty of "rum and tobacco." Bourne knew, from their cruel