Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/334

276 possibly attend people in our circumstances. The tide we found had fallen two feet and still continued to fall; anchors were, however, got out and laid ready for heaving as soon as the tide should rise, but to our great surprise we could not observe it to rise in the least.

Orders were now given for lightening the ship, which was begun by starting our water and pumping it up; the ballast was then got up and thrown overboard as well as six of our guns (all that we had upon deck). The seamen worked with surprising cheerfulness and alacrity: no grumbling or growling was to be heard throughout the ship, not even an oath (though the ship was in general as well furnished with them as most in His Majesty's service). By about one o'clock the water had fallen so low that the pinnace touched ground as it lay under the ship's bows ready to take in an anchor. After this the tide began to rise, and as it rose the ship worked violently upon the rocks, so that by two she began to make water, which increased very fast. At night the tide almost floated her, but she made water so fast that three pumps hard worked could only just keep her clear, and the fourth absolutely refused to deliver a drop of water. Now, in my opinion, I entirely gave up the ship, and packing up what I thought I might save prepared myself for the worst.

The most critical part of our distress now approached; the ship was almost afloat and everything ready to get her into deep water, but she leaked so fast that with all our pumps we could only just keep her free. If (as was probable) she should make more water when hauled off she must sink, and we well knew that our boats were not capable of carrying us all ashore, so that some, probably most of us, must be drowned. A better fate, maybe, than those would have who should get ashore without arms to defend themselves from the Indians or provide themselves with food, in a country where we had not the least reason to hope for subsistence, so barren had we always found it, and, had they even met with good usage from the natives and food to support them, debarred from the hope of ever again seeing their native