516 



VOYAGE FROM CERaM 



[chap. sxxt. 



Bpringing itp, with a tlark bank of clouds, again gave iis 

 hopes of reaching ilysoL We were soon, however, again 

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

 violence, and continued all night in irregular gnsts, and 

 with a abort cross sea tossed us about unmercifully, and 

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

 forced to mn 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 islaud of Poppa, and the wind being again a little 

 southerly, we made all sail in oitler to reach it Tliis 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 tiU better weather was frus- 

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

 not teR 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 woidd conclude either 

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

 me and run away with her. However, aa it was phyaically 

 impossible now for me to reach him, the only thing to be 

 done was to make the best of my way to Waigiou, and 

 trust to our meeting some ti-aders, who might convey to 

 him the news of my safety. 



Finding on my map a group of three small islands, 

 twenty-five miles north of Poppa, I resolved, if possible, to 

 rest there a day or two. We could lay our boat's head 

 N.E. by K; but a hea\y sea from the eastward so con- 

 tinually beat us off our coui-se, and we made so much 

 leeway, that I found it would be as much as we could do 

 to Teach tliem. It was a delicate point to keep our head 

 in the best direction, neither so close to the wind as to 

 stop our way, or so free as to carry us too far to leeward. 

 I continually directed the steersman myself, and by inces- 

 sant vigilance succeeded, just at suuset, in bringing our 

 boat to an anchor under the lee of the southtirn point of 

 one of the islands. The anchorage was, however, by no 

 means good, there being a fringing coral reef, dry at low 

 water, beyond which, on a bottom strewn with musses of 



