218 Pickering on the Language and Inhabitants 
great difficulty, by clinging to the rigging as well as their exhaust- 
ed strength would permit. 
At daybreak they discovered that a part of the reef, estimated 
to be about three miles to leeward, was dry; and, shortly after- 
wards, they observed land to the eastward, but at the distance of 
twenty or thirty miles from them. 
One of their boats was still left; but that was in a poor con- 
dition for carrying the remainder of the ship’s company, eleven in 
number, to so considerable a distance as the land appeared to be 
from them. However, there was no alternative; and, accordingly, 
after taking into the boat a small quantity of bread, water, wear- 
ing apparel, a musket and brace of pistols, with gunpowder, cut- 
lasses, and a tinder-box, they quitted the wreck. 
On leaving the ship they steered for the reef before mention- 
ed; the part of which, that was out of water, being only about six- 
teen rods long and quite narrow. They soon decided, that it was 
better to throw themselves into the hands of the natives of the 
neighbouring islands, whoever they might be, than to run the haz- 
ard of going to sea in a boat wholly unseaworthy, and when they 
had only a few pounds of bread and but little water for their sub- 
sistence. The dreary night was passed upon the reef; where, how- 
ever, they had, to their great joy, succeeded in taking an eel, and 
a few crabs and snails, which they cooked with some sticks of 
drift wood that had lodged upon the rocks. 
Before sunrise the next morning they observed a canoe at a 
short distance from them, containing twenty-two of the natives of 
the neighbouring island; which, as it afterwards appeared, was 
Baubelthouap, the largest of the Pelew group. The islanders, how- 
ever, being evidently in fear, did not approach nearer until the 
seamen attached a shirt to an oar and hoisted it, as a token of a 
