CHAP. xxxv.J TO WAWIOU. 335 



directiou of Salwatty, which I hoped to reach, as I could 

 there easily get a boat to take provisions and stores to my 

 companion in Mysol. This wind did not, however, last 

 long, bnt died away into a calm ; and a light west wind 

 springing up, with a dark bank of clouds, again gave us 

 hopes of reaching Mysol. We v/ere soon, however, again 

 disappointed. The E.S.E. wind began to blow again with 

 violence, and continued all night in irregular gusts, and 

 with a short cross sea tossed us about unmercifully, and 

 so continually took our sails aback, that we were at length 

 forced to run before it with our jib only, to escape being 

 swamped by our heavy mainsail. After another miserable 

 and anxious night, we found that we had drifted westward 

 of the island of Poppa, and the wind being again a little 

 southerly, we made all sail in order to reach it. This we 

 did not succeed in doing, passing to the north-west, when 

 the wind again blew hard from the E.S.E., and our last 

 hope of finding a refuge till better weather was frus- 

 trated. This was a very serious matter to me, as I could 

 not tell how Charles Allen might act, if, after waiting in 

 vain for me, he should return to Wahai, and find that I 

 had left there long before, and had not since been heard of. 

 Such an event as our missing an island forty miles long 

 would hardly occur to him, and he would conclude either 

 that our boat had foundered, or that my crew had murdered 

 me and run away with her. However, as it was physically 



