lly dwindled down, our two-
biscuit ration being reduced to one, then to half-a-one a day, and then
to none at all, when all of us had to eat berries with the little piece
of salt pork served out to us, and an occasional fish that we sometimes
succeeded in catching in the native fashion.

At last, at the beginning of September, the skipper determined that all
hands should put to sea again in the two boats, in order to make our way
across the intervening gulf of water to Good Success Bay, at the extreme
south-east point of Tierra del Fuego, opposite to Staten Island, on the
other side of the Strait of Le Maire.

This plan was adopted, and we launched the boats, now much lighter than
when they originally had left the poor _Esmeralda_, for they had nothing
now to carry but ourselves, save water, our provisions being all
exhausted.

For three days and nights we suffered terribly from hunger, besides
being buffeted about by adverse winds; but, happily, the fourth morning
brought us relief, although we had not yet got in sight of Staten
Island.

Far away on the horizon, on our starboard hand, Jorrocks saw a ship
standing to the westward; so, rigging up the long-boat's sails again--
for the wind was contrary to the course we had been trying to fetch, and
we had hauled them down in despair, allowing the boats to drift about on
the ocean without heart or energy--we made a board to the south, so as
to cut off the vessel as she steered towards Cape Horn, taking the
jolly-boat in tow behind us, for she spread such little canvas that she
could not keep up with the larger boat.

Fortunately, the wind held, and the ship did not change her course; so,
about mid-day, we came up with her.

She was a London vessel, the _Iolanthe_, bound to Valparaiso; so her
captain, seeing that we were shipwrecked mariners in distress, took us
on board at once, and treated us like brothers, without waiting even to
hear our story about the loss of the _Esmeralda_.

In thirty days more we were landed at Valparaiso.

Here, by rights, I ought to finish my yarn, for I said when I began that
I was only going to give a full, fair, and truthful statement as to how
I came to go to sea, and of my escape, just by "the skin of my teeth,"
as the saying goes, from the perils of the ocean off Cape Horn on this
first voyage; and now, as the _Esmeralda_ got burnt and her keel and
bottom timbers are lying beneath the waves--the catastrophe terminating,
of course