KEDGE ANCHOR SUCCEEDS IN DESERTING. 1G7 



to hear auglit of them afterwards ; but as my narra- 

 tive progresses, a recountal of their adventures will 

 be elicited : for the present we will leave them and 

 return to our barque. On discovering the loss of his 

 men the captain stormed ; but finding that the whole 

 procedure had been carried on with the utmost 

 secresy, and that few, if any, of those remaining, 

 were cojynizant of more than the mere desertion of 

 the men, he allowed it to drop, and little was said 

 about them thereafter, until circumstances obtruded 

 them on his notice. It will be observed that Kedge 

 Anchor has at length managed to get away, on this, 

 his third attempt, having endeavored to get clear 

 from us in Vasse, and Balli, and now, in the most 

 unpromising place of all, has succeeded. He was 

 the possessor of two or three English sovereigns ; 

 and this circumstance must have caused the others 

 to enlist him in the enterprize, as they knew his use- 

 lessness too well to count on his being of service to 

 them. 



On the afternoon of the 23d, the barques Isabella 

 and Lady Emma anchored in the baj', and, soon 

 after, the schooner Otago — making, in all, five of us 

 moored in this shelter. The Otago reported having 

 spoken the James Allen. She had taken three hun- 

 dred barrels of oil, including the whale we saw her 

 capture, during the present month. The captain of 

 the Otago also reported having fallen in with the 

 lower mast of a vessel of about three hundred tons, 

 evidently carried away in a gale from some ship. 

 They managed to get it in tow, but the line parting, 

 they took no further trouble with it. This circum- 

 stance elicited our fears of a terrible misfortune 



