ty to perform on board the _Nancy Bell_.

It was just noon; and, the sun being for a wonder unobscured, he
determined to take a final observation to fix their position, or rather
that of the reef on which the ill-fated vessel was doomed to leave her
bones. This was an eventuality which evidently could not take long in
its accomplishment, for the forward portion of the ship was being
rapidly broken to pieces, and it would not be any great time before the
stern followed suit, some of the cabin furniture below having already
been shaken down, while the poop did not offer a very firm foothold,
trembling every now and then from the washing in and out of the waves
below, as if, the poor thing were seized with a submarine ague fit!

After a brief calculation, as briefly worked out, Mr Meldrum found that
the ridge of rocks, which bore north-west by south-east, was in
longitude 68 degrees 45 minutes east, and latitude 49 degrees 16 minutes
south. These facts indisputably settled the point of their being to the
southwards of Cape Saint Louis, put down on the chart as the westernmost
point of Kerguelen Land, and that the highest of the snow-covered
mountain peaks to the south-east was Mount Ross. The information, he
thought, might possibly be of much assistance to them hereafter in
directing their course, should such a step become necessary, to those
better known portions of the island on the eastern side which whalers
and seal-hunting craft were reported to be in the habit of frequenting
during the short summer season of that dreary region. This period,
however, would not come round for the next three or four months, as it
was now only the first week in August, the midwinter of antarctic
climes.

The last observation made, and the ship's ensign hoisted, upside down,
on the stump of the mizzen-mast--not so much for the very unlikely
chance of any passing vessel observing it, as from the special request
of Mr McCarthy, that, as he expressed it, the poor _Nancy Bell_ should
"have a dacent burial"--Mr Meldrum at length gave the word for all
hands to embark, an operation which occupied even less time than that of
his "taking the sun."

First, in due order of precedence, the ladies were lowered down in a
chair by a whip from a boom rigged out over the stern right on to the
raft, where a comfortable place had been arranged in the centre and
barricaded round with chests and barrels. Next, Captain Dinks was
lowered down in his co