June 17, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
931 
From Crinton Bay they sailed down the coast 
to the southeast end of the island and anchored 
ship off the main beach. The sea was too high 
to permit boats to land “and each day the 
weather was no better nor the water any 
smoother.” By Oct. 16 there was every indi¬ 
cation of a storm and on the morning of the 
17th the wind blew stronger and stronger; “the 
gale still increasing to a hurricane we veered 
out all 'the cable on both anchors. The ship 
now began to drive and drag her anchors to¬ 
ward a dangerous reef. She was shipping much 
water and was leaking; pumps duly attended.” 
As she continued to drag her anchors, labored 
heavily and was leaking, the captain called a 
council of officers and crew in his cabin to de¬ 
cide what was best to be done. It was impos¬ 
sible to clear the land on any tack and the con- 
were frost-bitten. At about 9:00 p. m. all hands 
went to a shanty, where we made a fire, dried 
our clothes and then lay down to rest. 
“At midnight I got up and walked out to see 
if our provisions were safe from the water. 
The wind had hauled around to the westward, 
and now blew a hard breeze off shore. When I 
came opposite the ship she gave a roll to wind¬ 
ward, and a heavy sea coming in at the time, 
she floated and went off from the beach. I 
watched her for about half an hour and never 
saw her afterward. Her yards were clewed 
down, her sails not furled, her canvas adrift, 
gangways open and hatches off. She had eighty 
casks of coal aboard and must have sunk soon.” 
When the provisions were inventoried next 
morning, the castaways found that they had 
taken from the ship six casks of bread, four ol 
There are no trees nor bushes on the island 
and so no fuel, though there are tangled grass 
and briers, and a plant which they called wild 
cabbage, and ate as such. Four shanties built 
some fifteen years before by elephant hunters 
from New London contained each a stove, and 
there were two sets of tryworks with several 
hundred casks. The crew was now divided up 
into five gangs and went to killing sea ele¬ 
phants, to barrel up the oil to be shipped when¬ 
ever Captain Fuller should come, for Captain 
Fuller, of the Pilot Bride, and Captain Williams, 
of the bark Trinity, had promised to look out 
for one another. 
The nineteen Portuguese negroes who had 
been shipped at the Cape Verde Islands, says 
Captain Easmond, “had never seen frost nor 
snow before, but they stood the cold very well 
TOURISTS AND YELLOWSTONE PARK BEARS. 
From a photograph by J. Berry. 
elusion reached was to run the ship on shore 
to save lives, so at 9:30 a. m. they slipped the 
cable and ran the ship for the beach. 
“We were then a hard crew to look at—with 
a wild sheet of water on the starboard bow, 
and before us a wild beach to make, with death 
staring us in the face. At gh. 40m. a. m. the 
ship grounded about fifty yards from the beach. 
The sea was very rough, and we could not 
lower the boat. Antonio, one of the Portu¬ 
guese, volunteered to go ashore, and accord¬ 
ingly jumped overboard with the lance warp 
and made his way to land with the rope. Then, 
by hauling the main yards back, the ship wore 
around and brought her side to the beach, 
which made the water smooth enough to lower 
a boat in which many hands landed. Then we 
began to haul ashore what provisions we could 
get a hold of. Some lost all their clothes and 
all hands lost some, more or less; but we all 
landed safe, and got out about two months’ 
prog with four casks of coal. None of us 
suffered severely, though seven of the negroes 
coal, one barrel of molasses, one of sugar, eight 
of pork, some coffee, five pounds of powder and 
a bag of shot, with eight months’ supply of to¬ 
bacco. In other words, these men, ninety-five 
hundred miles from home, had two months’ 
provisions. 
Heard’s Island, says our chronicler, is 312 
miles from Christmas Harbor, Island of Deso¬ 
lation. It is thirty-five miles long and from 
three to five miles wide, narrowing to a sandy 
point on the southeast. A range of ice-covered 
mountains with a volcano 6,000 feet high in the 
center, extends across the whole breadth of the 
island six miles from its southeast point, and 
this range cut off the castaways from their com¬ 
panions at Crinton Bay. In summer, in the 
glaciers which covered this range, were seen 
great cracks, the bottoms of which could not 
be seen, and which prevented crossing in sum¬ 
mer, while in winter the weather could not be 
depended on. Cliffs and peaks of ice extended 
out over the sea and from time to time huge 
masses of this ice would fall into the water. 
and were a match for me, and when I say that, 
all seagoing men who know John Easmond 
know what it means. They wore nothing but 
canvas pants to their skins, shoes with wooden 
soles and skin uppers and no stockings. They 
were strong fellows and good workers, and 
would lug six or eight pieces of blubber weigh¬ 
ing 150 pounds suspended on a pole three feet 
long on their backs. They stood hardships 
better than the average of the white men. 
“Being busy with our work of killing the 
elephants—we got altogether before leaving the 
island five hundred barrels of oil—the weeks 
passed away and it came time to expect Captain 
Fuller in the Pilot Bride. Then I remembered 
the words of the Apostle Paul, ‘keep wide awake 
and watch, for you know not what time the 
ship may come.’ This was on the 28th of 
December, but no ship did come and we thought 
it bad that we should be left on that solitary 
island to spend a winter on account of Captain 
Fuller’s neglect. We had not much books to 
pass away the time, only a few pages of 
