about a quarter of a mile: It was too narrow for us to keep in it
longer; yet this tide of ebb so much assisted the boats, that by noon we
had got an offing of near two miles. We had, however, reason to despair
of deliverance, even if the breeze, which had now died away, should
revive, for we were still embayed in the reef; and the tide of ebb being
spent, the tide of flood, notwithstanding our utmost efforts, again
drove the ship into the bight. About this time, however, we saw another
opening, near a mile to the westward, which I immediately sent the first
lieutenant, Mr Hicks, in the small boat to examine: In the mean time we
struggled hard with the flood, sometimes gaining a little, and sometimes
losing; but every man still did his duty, with as much calmness and
regularity as if no danger had been near. About two o'clock, Mr Hicks
returned with an account that the opening was narrow and dangerous, but
that it might be passed: The possibility of passing it was sufficient
encouragement to make the attempt, for all danger was less imminent than
that of our present situation. A light breeze now sprung up at E.N.E.
with which, by the help of our boats, and the very tide of flood that
without an opening would have been our destruction, we entered it, and
were hurried through with amazing rapidity, by a torrent that kept us
from driving against either side of the channel, which was not more than
a quarter of a mile in breadth. While we were shooting this gulph, our
soundings were from thirty to seven fathom, very irregular, and the
ground at bottom very foul.

As soon as we had got within the reef, we anchored in nineteen fathom,
over a bottom of coral and shells. And now, such is the vicissitude of
life, we thought ourselves happy in having regained a situation, which
but two days before it was the utmost object of our hope to quit. Rocks
and shoals are always dangerous to the mariner, even where their
situation has been ascertained; they are more dangerous in seas which
have never before been navigated, and in this part of the globe they are
more dangerous than in any other; for here there are reefs of coral
rock, rising like a wall almost perpendicularly out of the unfathomable
deep, always overflowed at high-water, and at low-water dry in many
places; and here the enormous waves of the vast Southern Ocean, meeting
with so abrupt a resistance, break with inconceivable violence, in a
surf which no rocks or storms in the