Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/486

428 12th. Another died.

14th. A third died to-day: neither of these people had grown either better or worse for many days.

20th. Lost another man.

26th. Lost three more people to-day.

3rd March. In the evening some of the people thought they saw land, but that opinion was rejected almost without examination, as by the journals which had been kept by the log, we were still above a hundred leagues from land, and by observations of sun and moon, full 40. The night was chiefly calms and light breezes, with fog and mist.

4th. Day broke and showed us at its earliest dawn how fortunate we had been in the calms of last night. What was then supposed to be land proved really so, and not more than five miles from us, so that another hour would have infallibly have carried us upon it. But fortunate as we might think ourselves to be yet unshipwrecked, we were still in extreme danger. The wind blew right upon the shore and with it ran a heavy sea, breaking mountains high upon the rocks, with which it was everywhere lined, so that, though some in the ship thought it possible, the major part did not hope to be able to get off. Our anchors and cables were accordingly prepared, but the sea ran too high to allow us a hope of the cables holding should we be driven to the necessity of using them, and should we be driven ashore the breakers gave us little hope of saving even our lives. At last, however, after four hours spent in the vicissitudes of hope and fear, we found that we got gradually off, and before night we were out of danger. The land from whence we so narrowly escaped is part of Terra de Natal, lying between the rivers Sangue and Fourmis, about twenty leagues to the southward of the Bay of Natal.

7th. For these some days past the seamen have found the ship to be driven hither and thither by currents in a manner totally unaccountable to them.

The surface of the water was pretty thickly strewed with