Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/316

292 board of her passage out of the harbour. She was therefore obliged to cast anchor, and wait for a wind, to extricate her from this dangerous situation.

We lay to, in hopes that she would soon rejoin us; but it was half an hour past four before she could overtake us. The captain then told us that he was in danger of being wrecked at the entrance of the harbour which we had quitted. Having been forced by the current to come to an anchor on a coral bottom, the cable had been cut by the rocks, at the moment when a breeze sprang up at south-east, and carried them from the rocks. They had come too near them to cast a second anchor with advantage; and the frigate quitted the station with the loss of an anchor, and three fathoms of cable.

Our position now enabled us to observe, that the channel of St. George is not more than 30,000 or 35,000 toises in breadth, at its southern extremity. The obscurity of the weather appears to have led Carteret into the error, of supposing its breadth almost double of what we found it.

We tried during the night, and the current carried us into St. George's channel, at the rate of 2,500 toises in the hour.

About one o'clock in the morning the Isle of Man bore W.S.W., distant 5,000 toises. A very