Page 275 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

twenty-four days. The mutiny had taken place on the 13th
of January; it was now the 6th of February. ‘Surely,’ thought
he, ‘the Ladybird might have returned by this time.’ There
was no one to tell him that the Ladybird had been driven
into Port Davey by stress of weather, and detained there for
seventeen days.
That night the wind fell, and they had to take to their oars.
Rowing all night, they made but little progress, and Rufus
Dawes suggested that they should put in to the shore and
wait until the breeze sprang up. But, upon getting under the
lee of a long line of basaltic rocks which rose abruptly out
of the sea, they found the waves breaking furiously upon
a horseshoe reef, six or seven miles in length. There was
nothing for it but to coast again. They coasted for two days,
without a sign of a sail, and on the third day a great wind
broke upon them from the south-east, and drove them back
thirty miles. The coracle began to leak, and required con-
stant bailing. What was almost as bad, the rum cask, that
held the best part of their water, had leaked also, and was
now half empty. They caulked it, by cutting out the leak,
and then plugging the hole with linen.
‘It’s lucky we ain’t in the tropics,’ said Frere. Poor Mrs.
Vickers, lying in the bottom of the boat, wrapped in her wet
shawl, and chilled to the bone with the bitter wind, had not
the heart to speak. Surely the stifling calm of the tropics
could not be worse than this bleak and barren sea.
The position of the four poor creatures was now almost
desperate. Mrs. Vickers, indeed, seemed completely pros-
trated; and it was evident that, unless some help came, she

For the Term of His Natural Life