428 CAPTAIN COOK'S VOYAGES 



that the damages they had received would require three 

 weeks to repair. 



" Thus, finding a farther advance to the northward, as 

 well as a nearer approach to either continent, obstructed by 

 a sea blocked up with ice, we judged it both injurious to the 

 service, as well as fruitless with respect to the design of our 

 voyage, to make any farther attempts toward a passage. 

 This, added to the representations of Captain Gore, deter- 

 mined Captain Clerke to sail for Awatska Bay, to repair our 

 damages there ; and, before the winter should set in, to 

 explore the coast of Japan. 



" I will not endeavour to conceal the joy that brightened 

 the countenances of every individual, as soon as Captain 

 Clerke's resolutions were made known. We were all 

 heartily sick of a navigation full of danger, and in which the 

 utmost perseverance had not been repaid with the smallest 

 probability of success. We therefore turned out faces 

 home, after an absence of three years, with a delight and 

 satisfaction which, notwithstanding the tedious voyage we 

 had still to make, and the immense distance we had to run, 

 were as freely entertained, and perhaps as fully enjoyed, 

 as if we had been already in sight of the Land's End. 



" Captain Clerke was now no longer able to get out of 

 his bed ; he therefore desired that the officers would receive 

 their orders from me, and directed that we would proceed 

 with all speed to Awatska Bay. The wind continuing 

 westerly, we stood on to the south till early on the morning 

 of the 19th, when, after a few hours' rain, it blew from the 

 eastward and freshened to a strong gale. We accordingly 

 made the most of it while it lasted, by standing to the 

 westward under all the sail we could carry. On the 21st, 

 at half -past five in the morning, we saw a very high peaked 

 mountain on the coast of Kamtschatka, called Cheepoonskoi 

 Mountain, twenty-five or thirty leagues distant. 



" On the 22nd of August, 1779, at nine o'clock in the 

 morning, departed this life, Captain Charles Clerke, in the 

 thirty-eighth year of his age. He died of a consumption 

 which had evidently commenced before he left England, 

 and of which he had lingered during the whole voyage. 

 His very gradual decay had long made him a melancholy 

 object to his friends ; yet the equanimity with which he 

 bore it, the constant flow of good spirits, which continued 

 to the last hour, and a cheerful resignation to his fate, 

 afforded them some consolation. It was impossible not to 

 feel a more than common degree of compassion for a person 

 whose whole life had been a continued scene of those 

 difficulties and hardships to which a seaman's occupation 

 is subject, and under which he at last sunk. He was 



