by their departure, but rather added to our future security: one in
particular, James Mitchell by name, we had all the reason in the
world to think had committed no less than two murders since the loss
of our ship; one on the person found strangled on board, another on
the body of a man whom we discovered among some bushes upon Mount
Misery, stabbed in several places, and shockingly mangled. This
diminution of our numbers was succeeded by an unfortunate accident
much more affecting in its consequences, I mean the death of Mr.
Cozens, midshipman; in relating which with the necessary impartiality
and exactness, I think myself obliged to be more than ordinarily
particular. Having one day, among other things, got a cask of peas out
of the wreck, about which I was almost constantly employed, I brought
it to shore in the yawl; when having landed it, the captain came down
upon the beach, and bid me to go up to some of the tents and order
hands to come down and roll it up; but finding none except Mr. Cozens,
I delivered him the orders, who immediately came down to the captain,
where I left them when I returned to the wreck. Upon my coming on
shore again, I found that Mr. Cozens was put under confinement by the
captain, for being drunk and giving him abusive language: however,
he was soon after released. A day or two after, he had some dispute
with the surgeon, and came to blows: all these things incensed the
captain greatly against him. I believe this unfortunate man was kept
warm with liquor, and set on by some ill-designing persons; for, when
sober, I never knew a better natured man, or one more inoffensive. Some
little time after, at the hour of serving out provisions, Mr. Cozens
was at the store tent; and having, it seems, lately had a quarrel with
the purser, and now some words arising between them, the latter told
him he was come to mutiny; and without any further ceremony, fired a
pistol at his head, which narrowly missed him. The captain, hearing
the report of a pistol, and perhaps the purser's words, that Cozens
was come to mutiny, ran out of his hut with a cocked pistol in his
hand, and, without asking any questions, immediately shot him through
the head. I was at this time in my hut, as the weather was extremely
bad; but running out upon the alarm of this firing, the first thing
I saw was Mr. Cozens on the ground, weltering in his blood: he was
sensible, and took me by the hand, as he did several others, shaking
his head, as if he meant to take leave of us. If Mr. Cozens' behaviour
to his captain was indecent and provoking, the captain's, on the other
hand, was rash and hasty: if the first was wanting in that respect
and observance which is due from a petty officer to his commander,
the latter was still more unadvised in the method he took for the
enforcement of his authority; of which, indeed, he was jealous to the
last degree, and which he saw daily declining, and ready to be trampled
upon. His mistaken apprehension of a mutinous design in Mr. Cozens,
the sole motive of this rash action, was so far from answering the end
he proposed by it, that the men, who before were much dissatisfied and
uneasy, were by this unfortunate step thrown almost into open sedition
and revolt. It was evident that the people, who ran out of their tents,
alarmed by the report of fire-arms, though they disguised their real
sentiments for the present, were extremely affected at this catastrophe
of Mr. Cozens (for he was greatly beloved by them): their minds were
now exasperated, and it was to be apprehended, that their resentment,
which was smothered for the present, would shortly shew itself in
some desperate enterprise. The unhappy victim, who lay weltering in
his blood on the ground before them, seemed to absorb their whole
attention; the eyes of all were fixed upon him; and visible marks of
the deepest concern appeared in the countenances of the spectators.
The persuasion the captain was under, at the time he shot Mr. Cozens,
that his intentions were mutinous, together with a jealousy of the
diminution of his authority, occasioned also his behaving with less
compassion and tenderness towards him afterwards than was consistent
with the unhappy condition of the poor sufferer: for when it was begged
as a favour by his mess-mates, that Mr. Cozens might be removed to
their tent, though a necessary thing in his dangerous situation, yet
it was not permitted; but the poor wretch was suffered to languish on
the ground some days, with no other covering than a bit of canvass
thrown over some bushes, where he died. But to return to our story:
the Captain, addressing himself to the people thus assembled, told
them, that it was his resolution to maintain his command over them as
usual, which still remained in as much force as ever; and then ordered
them all to return to their respective tents, with which order they
instantly complied. Now we had saved the long-boat from the wreck, and
got it in our possession, there was nothing that seemed so necessary
towards the advancing our delivery from this desolate place, as the
new modelling this vessel so as to have room for all those who were
inclined to go off in her, and to put her in a condition to bear the
stormy seas we must of course encounter. We therefore hauled her up,
and having placed her upon blocks, sawed her in two, in order to
lengthen her about twelve feet by the keel. For this purpose, all
those who could be spared from the more immediate task of procuring
subsistence, were employed in fitting and shaping timber as the
carpenter directed them; I say, in procuring subsistence, because the
weather lately having been very tempestuous, and the wreck working
much, had disgorged a great part of her contents, which were every
where dispersed about the shore.
We now sent frequent parties up the Lagoons, which sometimes succeeded
in getting some sea-fowl for us. The Indians appearing again in the
offing we put off our yawl, in order to frustrate any design they
might have of going up the Lagoon towards the deserters, who would
have availed themselves of some of their canoes to have got upon the
main. Having conducted them in, we found that their intention was to
settle among us, for they had brought their wives and children with
them, in all about fifty persons, who immediately set about building
themselves wigwams, and seemed much reconciled to our company; and,
could we have entertained them as we ought, they would have been of
great assistance to us, who were yet extremely put to it to subsist
ourselves, being a hundred in number; but the men, now subject to
little or no control, endeavoured to seduce their wives, which gave
the Indians such offence, that in a short time they found means to
depart, taking every thing along with them; and we, being sensible
of the cause, never expected to see them return again. The carpenter
having made some progress in his work upon the long-boat, in which
he was enabled to proceed tolerably, by the tools and other articles
of his business retrieved from the wreck, the men began to think of
the course they should take to get home; or rather, having borrowed
Sir John Narborough's Voyage of Captain Cheap, by the application of
Mr. Bulkely, which book he saw me reading one day in my tent, they,
immediately upon perusing it, concluded upon making their voyage home
by the Straits of Magellan. This plan was proposed to the captain,
who by no means approved of it, his design being to go northwards,
with a view of seizing a ship of the enemy's, by which means he might
join the Commodore: at present, therefore, here it rested. But the
men were in high spirits from the prospect they had of getting off
in the long-boat, overlooking all the difficulties and hazards of a
voyage almost impracticable, and caressing the carpenter, who indeed
was an excellent workman, and deserved all the encouragement they
could give him. The Indians having left us, and the weather continuing
tempestuous and rainy, the distresses of the people for want of food
become insupportable. Our number, which was at first one hundred and
forty-five, was now reduced to one hundred, and chiefly by famine,
which put the rest upon all shifts and devices to support themselves.
One day, when I was at home in my hut with my Indian dog, a party came
to my door, and told me their necessities were such, that they must
eat the creature or starve. Though their plea was urgent, I could not
help using some arguments to endeavour to dissuade them from killing
him, as his faithful services and fondness deserved it at my hands;
but, without weighing my arguments, they took him away by force and
killed him; upon which, thinking that I had at least as good a right to
a share as the rest, I sat down with them, and partook of their repast.
Three weeks after that I was glad to make a meal of his paws and skin,
which, upon recollecting the spot where they had killed him, I found
thrown aside and rotten. The pressing calls of hunger drove our men to
their wit's end, and put them upon a variety of devices to satisfy it.
Among the ingenious this way, one Phips, a boatswain's mate, having
got a water puncheon, scuttled it; then lashing two logs, one on each
side, set out in quest of adventures in this extraordinary and original
piece of embarkation. By this means he would frequently, when all the
rest were starving, provide himself with wild fowl; and it must have
been very bad weather indeed which could deter him from putting out
to sea when his occasions required. Sometimes he would venture far
out in the offing, and be absent the whole of the day: at last, it
was his misfortune, at a great distance from shore, to be overset by
a heavy sea; but being near a rock, though no swimmer, he managed so
as to scramble to it, and with great difficulty ascended it: there he
remained two days with very little hopes of any relief, for he was too
far off to be seen from shore; but fortunately a boat, having put off
and gone in quest of wild fowl that way, discovered him making such
signals as he was able, and brought him back to the island. But this
accident did not so discourage him but that soon after, having procured
an ox's hide, used on board for sifting powder, and called a gunner's
hide, by the assistance of some hoops he formed something like a canoe,
in which he made several successful voyages. When the weather would
permit us, we seldom failed of getting some wild fowl, though never in
any plenty, by putting off with our boats; but this most inhospitable
climate is not only deprived of the sun for the most part, by a thick,
rainy atmosphere, but is also visited by almost incessant tempests. It
must be confessed, we reaped some benefit from these hard gales and
overgrown seas, which drove several things ashore; but there was no
dependence on such accidental relief; and we were always alert to avail
ourselves of every interval of fair weather, though so little to be
depended on, that we were often unexpectedly and to our peril overtaken
by a sudden change. In one of our excursions I, with two more, in a
wretched punt of our own making, had no sooner landed at our station
upon a high rock, than the punt was driven loose by a sudden squall;
and had not one of the men, at the risk of his life, jumped into the
sea and swam on board her, we must in all probability have perished;
for we were more than three leagues from the island at the time. Among
the birds we generally shot, was the painted goose, whose plumage is
variegated with the most lively colours; and a bird much larger than
a goose, which we called the race-horse, from the velocity with which
it moved upon the surface of the water, in a sort of half flying, half
running motion. But we were not so successful in our endeavours by
land; for though we sometimes got pretty far into the woods, we met
with very few birds in all our walks. We never saw but three woodcocks,
two of which were killed by Mr. Hamilton, and one by myself. These,
with some humming-birds, and a large kind of robin redbreast, were the
only feathered inhabitants of this island, excepting a small bird with
two very long feathers in his tail, which was generally seen amongst
the rocks, and was so tame, that I have had them rest upon my shoulder
whilst I have been gathering shell-fish. Indeed, we were visited by
many birds of prey, some very large; but these only occasionally, and,
as we imagined, allured by some dead whale in the neighbourhood, which
was once seen. However, if we were so fortunate as to kill one of them,
we thought ourselves very well off. In one of my walks, seeing a bird
of this latter kind upon an eminence, I endeavoured to come upon it
unperceived with my gun, by means of the woods which lay at the back of
that eminence; but when I had proceeded so far in the wood as to think
I was in a line with it, I heard a growling close by me, which made me
think it advisable to retire as soon as possible; the woods were so
gloomy I could see nothing; but as I retired, this noise followed me
close till I had got out of them. Some of our men did assure me, that
they had seen a very large beast in the woods; but their description
of it was too imperfect to be relied upon. The wood here is chiefly
of the aromatic kind; the iron wood, a wood of a very deep red hue,
and another, of an exceeding bright yellow. All the low spots are very
swampy; but what we thought strange, upon the summits of the highest
hills were found beds of shells, a foot or two thick.