Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/352

296 day out of sight of land, to our no small satisfaction. A reef such as we have just passed is a thing scarcely known in Europe, or indeed anywhere but in these seas. It is a wall of coral rock, rising almost perpendicularly out of the unfathomable ocean, always covered at high-water, commonly by seven or eight feet, and generally bare at low-water. The large waves of the vast ocean meeting with so sudden a resistance make here a most terrible surf, breaking mountains high, especially when, as in our case, the general trade-wind blows directly upon it.

16th. At three o'clock this morning it dropped calm, which did not better our situation, for we were not more than four or five leagues from the reef, towards which the swell drove us. By six o'clock we were within a cable length of the reef, so fast had we been driven on it, without our being able to find ground with 100 fathoms. The boats were got out, to try if they could tow the ship off, but we were within forty yards when a light air sprang up, and moved the ship off a little. The boats being now manned tried to tow her away, but, whenever the air dropped, they only succeeded in keeping the ship stationary. We now found what had been the real cause of our escape, namely, the turn of the tide. It was the flood that had hurried us so unaccountably fast to the reef, which we had almost reached just at high-water. The ebb, however, aided by the boats' crews, only carried us about two miles from the reef, when the tide turned again, so that we were in no better situation. No wind would have been of any use, for we were so embayed by the reef that with the general trade-wind it would have been impossible to get out. Fortunately a narrow opening in the reef was observed, and a boat sent to examine it reporting that it was practicable—the other boats meanwhile struggling against the flood—the ship's head was turned towards it, and we were carried through by a stream like a mill-race. By four o'clock we came to an anchor, happy once more to encounter those shoals which but two days before we had thought ourselves supremely happy to have escaped from.