INTRODUCTION. 



head sea. We were somewhere off Sable Island at the time, our exact 

 bearings being unknown to us. The pumps were kept manned, and dili- 

 gent search made for the leak, but without avail. Such a condition of 

 affairs cast a shadow of gloom over the whole company : our provisions 

 gone, ship leaking badly, and not knowing at what moment it might 

 gain on us; the elements in all their fury let loose, so that we were en- 

 tirely in their power, drifting helplessly at the mercy of raging billows, 

 without knowledge of our position within a hundred miles. On the 

 evening of October 25, Thatcher's Island lights were sighted, and the 

 Florence seemed to have become animated, for with a fair NW. breeze 

 she sped like a thing of life, and before midnight we saw the reflected 

 lights of Boston on the clouds, and the next morning dropped anchor in 

 Provincetown, Mass. Provisions were secured and some slight repairs 

 made. 



On the morning of October 30, the Florence lay alongside of the same 

 dock she had left fifteen months before, every man brought back alive 

 and well. 



