To Waigiou. 519 



soon, however, again disappointed. The E.S.E. wind began 

 to blow again with violence, and continued all night in irregu- 

 lar gusts, and with a short cross sea tossed us about unmerci- 

 fully, and so continually took our sails aback, that we were at 

 length forced to run before it with our jib only, to escape be- 

 ing swamped by our heavy mainsail. After another misera- 

 ble and anxious night, we found that we had drifted west- 

 ward of the island of Poppa, and the wind being again a little 

 southerly, we made all sail in order to reach it. This we did 

 not succeed in doing, passing to the north-west, when the wind 

 again blew hard from the E.S.E., and our last hope of finding 

 a refuge till better weather was frustrated. This was a very se- 

 rious matter to me, as I could not tell how Charles Allen might 

 act, if, after waiting in vain for me, he should return to Wahai, 

 and find that I had left there long before, and had not since 

 been heard of. Such an event as our missing an island forty 

 miles long would hardly occur to him, and he would conclude 

 either that our boat had foundered, or that my crew had mur- 

 dered me and run away with her. However, as it was physic- 

 ally impossible now for me to reach him, the only thing to be 

 done was to make the best of my way to "Waigiou, and trust 

 to our meeting some traders, who might convey to him the 

 news of my safety. 



Finding on my map a group of three small islands, twenty- 

 five miles north of Poppa, I resolved, if possible, to rest there 

 a day or two. We could lay our boat's head N.E. by N, ; but 

 a heavy sea from the eastward so continually beat us off our 

 course, and we made so much leeway, that I found it would be 

 as much as we could do to reach them. It was a delicate 

 point to keep our head in the best direction, neither so close 

 to the wind as to stop our way, or so free as to carry us too 

 far to leeward. I continually directed the steersman myself, 

 and by incessant vigilance succeeded, just at sunset, in bring- 

 ing our boat to an anchor under the lee of the southern point 

 of one of the islands. The anchorage was, however, by no 

 means good, there being a fringing coral reef, dry at low wa- 

 ter, beyond which, on a bottom strewn with masses of coral, 

 we were obliged to anchor. We had now been incessantly 

 tossing about for four days in our small undecked boat, with 

 constant disappointments and anxiety, and it was a great com- 



