Page:Narrative of a survey of the intertropical and western coasts of Australia, Volume 2.djvu/107

 .l#t. minute, therefore, a/ter that time was pasaed.by .$uw, I us most anxiously. Every now and then we were in the midst of.the most violent rippling and whirlpools, which sometimes whirled the vessel round and round, to the danger of our masts. -Five o'clock at last arrived and the tide-eddies ceased, but the stream continued to run until a quarter of an hour afterwards, when at last the brig began to drit out slowly. To add now to the dilemma and .the darttier we were in, a breeze sprung up against us: }Lad it continued .. calm, we should have been drithd back through the deepest part of the channel, over the same ground that the flood had carried us in: we, how- ever, made sail and beat out, and before dark had made considerable progress; we then lost sight of the land until eleven o'clock, when some was seen to the eastward: at half. past eleven e had a dead calm; and, to increase our anx- iety, the tide had begun to flow, and to driR us towards the land, which was then ascertained to be the group 33, on whose shores the was distinctly heard to break. As midnight approached, the .noise became still more and more plain; but the moon at that time rose, and shewed that our position was very much more favourable than we had conjectured;for, by bearings of CarfareIll Island and the body of 88

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