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We had doubled the shoaly point which stretches from the mouth of the creek, and were making way merrily across the bay, at the head of which was the port of the little settlement, when we beheld to our dismay, a few miles down the river, the signs of the violent day breeze coming down upon us a long, rapidly advancing line of foam with the darkened water behind it.
Wind, rain, roily, shoaly seas breaking clear over the ship across decks drove Cook out from land to deeper water. With an Englishman's thoroughness for doing things and to make deadly sure just how the two continents lay to each other, Cook now scuds across Bering Strait thirty-nine miles to the Chukchee land of Siberia in Asia.
The island was very large, rocky, and thickly wooded, and the coast was rocky too, and the water very shoaly, which made me understand how difficult landing must have been in the stormy weather.
About nine o'clock, I was awakened by the montaria bumping against the sides of the vessel, which had veered suddenly round, and the full moon, previously astern, then shone full in the cabin. The wind had abruptly ceased, giving place to light puffs from the eastern shore, and leaving a long swell rolling into the shoaly bay.
The numbers of turtles which were seen swimming in quiet shoaly bays passed on the road, also gave us much amusement.
Her tall masts, still standing bolt upright amid the coral-reefs, presented a gaunt spectacle, plainly visible from the Hero's decks as she threaded her way among the shoaly waters, while a similar though less tragical warning was the disaster that had overtaken two other vessels, the Astrolabe and the Zélée, which by a sudden ebb of the tide were thrown high and dry upon the sands, and remained in this frightful condition for eight days before the returning waters drifted them off.
Conflans, at first, had determined to fight Hawke; and drew up accordingly, and did try a little: but gradually thought better of it; and decided to take shelter in the shoaly coasts and nooks thereabouts, which were unknown to Hawke, and might ruin him if he should pursue, the day being short, and the weather extremely bad. Weather itself almost to be called a storm.
At the first house a festival was going forward. We anchored at some distance from the shore, on account of the water being shoaly, and early in the morning three canoes put off, laden with salt fish, oil of manatee, fowls and bananas wares which the owners wished to exchange for different articles required for the festa. Soon after I went ashore.
The turtles had selected for their egg- laying a part of the sand-bank which was elevated at least twenty feet above the present level of the river; the animals, to reach the place, must have crawled up a slope. As we approached the island, numbers of the animals were seen coming to the surface to breathe, in a small shoaly bay.
An uglier poor thing you never saw, nor a bolder! Squat to the water, belching black smoke, her engines wheezing and repining, unwieldy of management, her bottom scraping every hummock of sand in all the shoaly Roads ah, she was ugly and courageous! Our two small gunboats, the Raleigh and the Beaufort, coming from Norfolk, now overtook us, we went on together.
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