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The permanent camp, which for many of the party was to be a tomb, was fixed a few miles from Cape Sabine, by the side of a pool of fresh water frozen, of course. Here a hut was built with stone walls three feet high, rafters made of oars with the blades cut off, and a canvas roof, except in the center, where an upturned whaleboat made a sort of a dome.
"That's the Reynard, sir one of the Sydney squadron patrolling the New Hebrides. I've seen her pretty often, and know her well." "Ah, we're in luck, Manuel. There's a chance now of getting rid of our prisoners for a time at least. She's steaming this way, and will be up to us in another hour. Get the whaleboat ready and hoist our colours."
He was afterwards a pilot at Port Philip, and was buried at Williamstown. The whaleboat reached Port Philip on January 3rd, 1838, having got through the Rip on the night of the 2nd. Ferris was the only man of the crew who had been in before, he having gone in with Batman, in the 'Rebecca' cutter, Captain Baldwin.
When it reached the end of the slack there was a jerk that shook the bark from stem to stern. Then came the tug of war. There was no small whaleboat behind it, but a great, 195 ton bark, and this massive bulk the creature actually towed like a steam-tug towing a steamship. The captain let more line out.
And then, with amazing abruptness, Jerry saw the whaleboat dimly emerge from the gloom close upon him, was blinded by the stab of the torch full in his eyes, and, even as he yelped his joy, felt and recognized Skipper's hand clutching him by the slack of the neck and lifting him into the air.
Directly after dinner, the "Yankee's" first cutter and the second whaleboat were ordered away, manned and armed. A Colt machine gun was placed in the bow of the former, and each carried an extra squad of armed marines. When the expedition returned it had in tow five decked sloops, one of which contained a quantity of fresh fish.
After he had taken up the station known as Snake Ridge he looked about for a good Special Survey. He engaged Davy and his whaleboat for a cruise in Port Albert waters and McMillan, Sheridan, and Loughnan were of the party. They went up the narrow channel called the Caledonian Canal, examined the bluffs, shores, and islands of Shallow Inlet, and at night encamped on St. Margaret's Island.
The captain, indeed, saw with clear eyes and spoke his mind aloud; and though a man of an astonishing hot-blooded courage, following life and taking its dangers in the spirit of a hound upon the slot, he had made a point of a big whaleboat. "Take your choice," he had said; "either new masts and rigging or that boat. I simply ain't going to sea without the one or the other.
His own letters and journal do not show that he did so at Botany Bay; but we have other evidence that he did, and that the signs of cultivation had not vanished at least ten years later. When George Bass was returning to Sydney in February, 1798, at the end of that wonderful cruise in a whaleboat which had led to the discovery of Westernport, he was becalmed off Botany Bay.
Other sounds, hollow and shrill treble mingling with diapason joined in the first. The noise came from just beyond the pressure-mound at the foot of which the party had halted. "Forward!" shouted Bennett; "hurry there, men!" Desperately eager, the men bent panting to their work. The sledge bearing the whaleboat topped the hummock. "Now, then, over with her!" cried Ferriss. But it was too late.
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