398 CAPTAIN COOK'S VOYAGES 



expedition. I make no doubt but we might have protected these 

 matters on shore with a good stout party, but they would have 

 been continually harassed, and the work inpeded ; and had any 

 unlucky accident gained them the possession of the fore-mast, 

 though only for a few minutes, we should have been totally ruined 

 in respect to another Northern campaign, which is certainly now 

 my principal object to forward. Our party on shore, tinder Lieu- 

 tenant King, were arranged on an eminence that the natives had 

 thrown up for a morai, which gave them great advantages, as they 

 commanded everything around them ; the Indians, however, 

 made two or three attacks with stones thrown from slings, but 

 they were immediately repulsed with the loss, in the whole, of 

 ten or twelve men, indeed they could not collect themselves to a 

 formidable body for the fire of the Discovery. By noon we had 

 got all our men and other matters on board, and the fore-mast 

 alongside ; with our glasses we could clearly see the Indians busied 

 in conveying the dead bodies over a hill up the country. I cannot 

 here help lamenting my own unhappy state of health, which is 

 sometimes so bad as hardly to suffer me to keep the deck, and of 

 course, farther incapacitates me for the succeeding so able a navi- 

 gator as my honoured friend and predecessor ; however, here are 

 very able officers, and I trust, with a firm dependence upon Provi- 

 dence, that with their assistance I may be able to prosecute the 

 remaining part of their Lordships' instructions with that zeal and 

 alacrity as may procure me the honour of their approbation. The 

 marines who fell with Captain Cook were Corporal Thomas, 

 Theophilus Hinks, John Allen, and Thomas Flabchett; the 

 lieutenant, sergeant, and two others wounded." 



" Monday, 1 5th February 1779. 



w As there was still a vast concourse of people where this un- 

 fortunate fray happened, I had some notion of taking a stout party 

 on shore, make what destruction I could among them, then burn 

 the town, canoes etc., for I have no doubt but firearms must drive 

 everything before them when you take room for action ; but the 

 officers who had been present at the fray observed that though our 

 muskets must in the end prove effectual, such were their 

 numbers, resolution, and advantageous retreats behind these walls, 

 that the attempt would doubtless cost us some and probably 

 many men ; that we laboured under great disadvantages in land- 

 ing, which we were there obliged to do upon slippery rocks 

 where our people with shoes could hardly stand, and they having 

 the fair use of the foot, were perfectly masters of themselves 

 upon these considerations, as the loss of a very few men would 

 now be most severely felt by us, I thought it would be improper 

 and probably injurious to the expedition to risk farther loss of the 

 people, I therefore determined to turn all endeavours towards for- 

 warding the equipment of the Resolution as we were now nearly 

 in a tattered condition, and as soon as we were in any tolerable 

 order, if they did not conduct themselves with some degree of 

 propriety, to warp her within a proper distance of the town, and 

 by landing under our own guns, thoroughly convince them that it 

 to our lenity, not our imbecility, that they owed their safety, 



