The safety of the whole party now depended upon my forming a prompt and
efficient plan of operations, and seeing it carried out with energy and
perseverance. As soon as I was out of sight of Mr. Smith and Coles I sat
down upon a rock on the shore to reflect upon our present position. The
view seawards was discouraging; the gale blew fiercely in my face and the
spray of the breakers was dashed over me; nothing could be more gloomy
and drear. I turned inland and could see only a bed of rock, covered with
drifting sand, on which grew a stunted vegetation, and former experience
had taught me that we could not hope to find water in this island; our
position here was therefore untenable, and but three plans presented
themselves to me: first, to leave a notice of my intentions on the
island, then to make for some known point on the main and there endeavour
to subsist ourselves until we should be found and taken off by the
Colonial schooner; secondly, to start for Timor or Port Essington;
thirdly, to try to make Swan River in the boats.

CONSOLATIONS OF RELIGION.

I determined not to decide hastily between these plans and, in order more
fully to compose my mind, I sat down and read a few chapters in the
Bible.

By the influence these imparted I became perfectly contented and resigned
to our apparently wretched condition and, again rising up, pursued my way
along the beach to the party. It may be here remarked by some that these
statements of my attending to religious duties are irrelevant to the
subject, but in such an opinion I cannot at all coincide. In detailing
the sufferings we underwent it is necessary to relate the means by which
those sufferings were alleviated; and after having, in the midst of
perils and misfortunes, received the greatest consolation from religion,
I should be ungrateful to my Maker not to acknowledge this, and should
ill perform my duty to my fellow men did I not bear testimony to the fact
that, under all the weightier sorrows and sufferings that our frail
nature is liable to, a perfect reliance upon the goodness of God and the
merits of our Redeemer will be found a sure refuge and a certain source
of consolation.

In pursuing my route along the beach I carefully examined every heap of
seaweed which the waves had thrown up, and was fortunate enough to find a
bag of flour which had been washed up by the tide and held there by some
rocks; though from daily soaking in salt water for several weeks it